ERIC ZUESSE | 10.01.2017 | OPINION
It is clear, from the overwhelming opposition to Donald Trump’s taking office on January 20th as the U.S. President, opposition on the part of the entire U.S. Establishment — the aristocrats and their agents in the government and media and think tanks — that any opportunity to replace Trump with the Democratic Party’s Establishment Presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, or any other Establishmentarian, would be welcomed by the Establishment. First, there were the efforts to have vote-recounts in the three states where Trump’s victory over Clinton were the narrowest; then, there was the orchestrated campaign to switch to her enough Electoral College electors for her to ‘win’; then, there was the effort to portray Trump’s win as having been engineered in Moscow and thus illegitimate. But now, could come the tactic that actually has the highest likelihood of succeeding, and it would replace Trump with his own Establishment Republican Vice President, Mike Pence. Here’s how it would work:
Whenever the Vice President and a majority of... the principal officers of the executive departments… transmit to the president pro tempore of the Senate and the speaker of the House of Representatives their written declaration that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, the Vice President shall immediately assume the powers and duties of the office as acting President.
Thereafter, when the President transmits to the president pro tempore of the Senate and the speaker of the House of Representatives his written declaration that no inability exists, he shall resume the powers and duties of his office unless the Vice President and a majority of either the principal officers of the executive department, or of such other body as Congress may by law provide, transmit within four days to the president pro tempore of the Senate and the speaker of the House of Representatives their written declaration that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office. Thereupon Congress shall decide the issue, assembling within forty-eight hours for that purpose if not in session.
Trump has appointed, as being far over a majority of the principal officers of the executive departments — i.e., majority of his 15-person Cabinet — Establishment Republicans, who favor continuation of the Cold War against Russia. This continuation of that hostility on the American side had started when the Establishment Republican U.S. President George Herbert Walker Bush, on 24 February 1990, confidentially instructed not only his Cabinet, but heads-of-state of America’s European allies, that NATO and NATO’s hostility toward Russia, was to continue in secret, even after the Soviet Union and its communism and its Warsaw Pact military alliance would end, which end of those Soviet entities occurred in 1991. Under Obama, the old American «Cold War» (henceforth against Russia on the alleged basis of both Ukraine and Syria) was getting hotter than it had been since at least the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962, but candidate Trump was now promising to stop it.
Either Trump will reverse his many public statements supporting rapprochement with Russia, or else the U.S. Establishment — which includes almost every living member and former member of Congress, and virtually all of the think tanks and newsmedia, and also the Establishmentarian Pence, whom Trump himself had appointed; and, also, the mostly Establishment Republicans whom Trump had selected for his Cabinet — will likely remove him from office and hand the Presidency to the Constitutionally assigned substitute, the U.S. V.P., Mike Pence himself.
In either case, America’s war against Russia would likely resume, as it was under Obama, and perhaps even as bad as Trump’s Democratic opponent Hillary Clinton had been promising to escalate it (which would be to World War III).
The Democratic political commentator, Keith Olbermann, already on 5 January 2017, was propagandizing for this outcome; but he didn’t say that he would actually prefer Pence to be President; he instead showed that he wanted Pence to be President; he showed it by his there urging that it happen.
NOTE: Olbermann misstated there, at 7:14- in that video, the U.S. Constitution, by his saying that the overthrow would be «by the Vice President and the Speaker of the House using the 25th Amendment» — that’s not what the 25th Amendment actually authorizes; it instead authorizes «the Vice President and a majority of» the Cabinet, to overthrow the elected President, and it makes no mention there of «the Speaker of the House», at all. Earlier, on 23 November 2016, Olbermann had gotten that matter right. Perhaps as Olbermann is getting older, he's losing his memory (thus forgetting what he had known a month or so earlier, on November 23rd), and increasingly is just winging it (instead of rechecking his key facts), and this might be why he now thinks that such a coup can be carried out merely by the «Vice President and the Speaker of the House» — i.e., by (the two Establishmentarians) Mike Pence and Paul Ryan. It’s fortunately not true. If it were that easy, then Trump might not be able to last as the President for even a month. Getting a majority of the Cabinet to participate in the conspiracy would be far less likely than that, even though they’re part of the Establishment. Some, even of the Establishment faction (and thus inclined toward dictatorship), might have a conscience.
What’s important here, however, is that this clause of the 25th Amendment does allow the Establishment Republican V.P. Pence, plus «a majority of» the Establishment Republican Cabinet that Trump has (unfortunately) selected, to throw Trump out and make the reactionary Pence become America’s President in his place. Trump, by choosing an Establishment V.P. and an Establishment Cabinet, has virtually invited an Establishment coup, unless he buckles early to the Establishment and violates every progressive promise he had uttered during his campaign for the Presidency.
What is especially remarkable here is that a putative «progressive Democrat», Olbermann, is actually proposing this fascist takeover of the U.S. Government, which the 25th Amendment allows, and which Trump himself was stupid enough to enable, by his having chosen so many conservative Republicans for his Cabinet, and for V.P.
Unfortunately, Trump seems not to have been bright enough to have known of this feature of the U.S. Constitution, and so might have been tragically unaware of the necessity for him to select anti-Establishment people for his V.P. and Cabinet; and, so, if Trump himself doesn’t rule as an Establishment President (which will become clear within two months at the most), a coup overthrowing him would actually be fairly easy, and the major question would be the coup’s timing. Presumably, the aristocracy would delay it until there is clarity that Trump is serious about reversing some of their key policies — such as NATO’s pushing Russia into a World War. Remarkably, this would be an entirely Constitutional coup — one that takes advantage of the stupid drafting of the 25th Amendment.
Stupidity might be rampant, but the American aristocracy (who are united behind GHW Bush’s 24 February 1990 plan) take advantage of every opportunity that’s available to them — and this is certainly a major one. Consequently, the next four years are remarkably likely to be a conservative rape of the U.S., and even of the world (along the lines of Hillary Clinton’s plan to finish GHW Bush’s plan, but overseen by Pence and the Republicans instead).
Up to the present moment at least, Trump is still displaying the courage to repudiate the U.S. aristocracy’s top priority, of continuing the war against Russia that GHW Bush started, and that Obama had been raising to a fever-pitch. If Trump sticks with this repudiation, and (somehow) survives in office, then, right there — on that one issue alone — he will be reversing the horrible U.S. history after 24 February 1990 (which the U.S. Establishment are obsessed to continue and culminate), and finally setting the world onto the most essential path to peace and prosperity (prosperity, that is, in all but the ‘defense’ industries), so that authentic progress can, perhaps, begin to be made on domestic issues, both inside the United States, and around the world.
PERSONAL NOTE: Although I expect the worst, I hope that subsequent events will prove me to have been wrong.