Donald Trump’s former lawyer has said the US President should step down, citing what he believes to be a serious decline in Trump’s mental condition. The remarks have added fuel to growing calls in Washington to invoke the 25th Amendment.
Ty Cobb, who worked in Trump’s legal team from July 2017 to May 2018, told the I newspaper that during his first term, there were people within the administration who would push back on the president’s extreme ideas and warn him when a policy was unwise or illegal. But in his second term, Cobb says, Trump has surrounded himself with people who are too afraid to challenge him at all.
As per The Mirror, Cobb also believes Trump is showing signs of “frontal lobe decline” and “possible dementia.” He argues that Trump’s long-standing narcissism has grown far worse as a result. “The narcissism has always been an issue for him but in an absence of the impulse control the frontal lobe provides it has unleashed furiously, which is why we see revenge, corruption, delusions of grandeur and [alleged] abuses of power,” he said.
He further warned that Trump was behaving like a virtual “dictator” who was damaging US democracy. “There has never been a president who announced war crimes he would commit at 4am or danced on the grave of decorated public servants like Mueller,” Cobb added. Pointing to Trump’s late-night social media outbursts, he said “we’re governed by a madman at this stage, there’s no other way to put it.”
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Why are calls to invoke the 25th Amendment increasing?
The 25th Amendment was introduced after President John F Kennedy’s assassination in 1963 and lays out what happens if a sitting president becomes unable to properly carry out their duties. Section Four of the amendment specifically allows for a president to be removed by a majority of senior officials in the executive branch or by a body set up by Congress.
Support for using the amendment is growing. Last month, Jamie Raskin, the leading Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee has proposed setting up a commission to work with Vice President JD Vance to remove Trump from office. “Public trust in Donald Trump’s ability to meet the duties of his office has dropped to unprecedented lows as he threatens to destroy entire civilizations, unleashes chaos in the Middle East while violating congressional war powers, aggressively insults the Pope of the Catholic Church and sends out artistic renderings online likening himself to Jesus Christ,” Raskin said in a statement.
“We are at a dangerous precipice, and it is now a matter of national security for Congress to fulfill its responsibilities under the 25th Amendment to protect the American people from an increasingly volatile and unstable situation,” he added.
Additionally, in early April, former MAGA congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene who is one of Trump’s most prominent allies has also sharply criticized the President, writing on X, “25TH AMENDMENT!!! Not a single bomb has dropped on America. We cannot kill an entire civilization. This is evil and madness.” Greene also accused Trump of betraying the very voters who brought him back to the White House, writing, “It’s always a lie and it’s always America Last. But it feels like the worst betrayal this time because it comes from the very man and the admin who we all believed was different and said no more.”
Other Democratic lawmakers have also spoken about it. Massachusetts Representative Seth Moulton wrote on X, “This is not normal. This is not just ‘Trump being Trump.’ This is an insane man who is unfit for office, and needs to be removed immediately.”
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How has the White House responded?
As per The Mirror, a 2024 New York Times report said that Trump’s public speeches were becoming “darker, harsher, longer, angrier, less focused, more profane and increasingly fixated on the past.”
The White House has rejected these concerns. Spokesman David Ingle defended the President, praising his “sharpness, unmatched energy, and historic accessibility,” according to The Mirror.
