The Case for Using the Twenty-fifth Amendment on Biden

This episode discusses the potential use of the 25th Amendment to address concerns about President Biden's cognitive fitness for office.

1. The 25th Amendment is designed for situations where a president may not recognize their own impairments.
2. There is a distinction between political and constitutional feasibility in invoking the amendment.
3. The episode emphasizes the lack of precedent for such a drastic measure, underscoring its political sensitivity.
4. Discusses the potential impact on Vice President Kamala Harris, exploring the advantages and risks of her becoming acting president.
5. It also reflects on the broader implications of presidential fitness and governance amidst the challenges of age and cognitive decline.

1: Introduction

Overview of the episode's theme and introduction of guest Jeannie Suk Gersen, focusing on the relevance and timing of discussing the 25th Amendment. Tyler Foggatt: "Welcome to The Political Scene, where we discuss pressing issues facing our political landscape."

2: The 25th Amendment and Biden

Discusses Biden's debate performance and its implications for his cognitive health and political future. Jeannie Suk Gersen: "The 25th Amendment was designed for a situation in which the president may not recognize his own impairment."

3: Historical Context

Explains the historical use and the political context of the 25th Amendment, comparing it to past presidencies. Jeannie Suk Gersen: "During Trump's presidency, there was discussion about this amendment as a way to address perceived mental unfitness."

4: Political and Ethical Ramifications

Examines the ethical and political consequences of invoking the 25th Amendment, including the potential effects on the administration and upcoming elections. Jeannie Suk Gersen: "It's not about fault or misdeeds but about capability to perform presidential duties."

5: Conclusion

Summarizes the discussion and reflects on the implications of presidential fitness for the office. Tyler Foggatt: "Thank you, Jeannie, for this insightful discussion on such a critical and timely topic."

1. Stay Informed: Understanding the constitutional tools at our disposal can empower us to better engage with our political system.
2. Engage in Dialogue: Discuss these issues in community forums to gauge public perception and inform others.
3. Vote Wisely: Consider the long-term implications of presidential candidates' health and policies.
4. Support Transparency: Advocate for clear health disclosures from all presidential candidates.
5. Educate Others: Share knowledge about the constitutional mechanisms like the 25th Amendment to foster a more informed electorate.

The New Yorker contributor and Harvard Law professor Jeannie Suk Gersen joins Tyler Foggatt to discuss a once obscure constitutional provision that allows Cabinet members to remove an unfit President from office. Gersen believes it’s time to use it on Biden. “The Twenty-fifth amendment was designed for a situation in which the President may not recognize his own impairment,” she says.

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Jeannie Suk Gersen, Tyler Foggatt, Kamala Harris

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Jeannie Suk Gersen
The idea that the Democrats are going to actually remove their leader from office, I think thats just a really drastic thing. And I understand its very drastic. But the 25th Amendment kind of was designed for a situation in which the president may not recognize his own impairment.

Tyler Foggatt
At the first presidential debate of the 2024 election, President Biden gave a dismal performance that made viewers wonder about his vigor and his cognitive health. This immediately raised questions about whether he should stay in the race or even finish out his term.

Jeannie Suk Gersen
Anybody can talking.

How did Biden do? Not talking. Not great, but, uh, a lot of people have resting 25th amendment face.

Tyler Foggatt
The 25th amendment is a once obscure provision of the Constitution.

Kamala Harris
Includes a section that allows a president to be removed from office when deemed unfit.

Tyler Foggatt
Jeannie Sut Gerson wrote about the amendment five separate times during the tumult of the Trump administration.

Following the debate, Jeannie wrote a piece for the New Yorker titled this is what the 25th amendment was designed for, where she calls on Democrats to use the amendment against Biden.

You're listening to the political scene. I'm Tyler Foggatt, and I'm a senior editor at the New Yorker.

Hey, Jeannie, thanks so much for coming on the show.

Jeannie Suk Gersen
Thanks, Tyler.

Tyler Foggatt
It's always nice to have you here, even though I feel like it's always during, like, a harrowing moment for the country. So sorry about that.

So you recently wrote a piece in which you argue that President Biden's cabinet should use the 25th amendment to get him to resign. This is a pretty bold argument, given that the 25th amendment really hasn't been used that much in history. And so I'm wondering if you could.

Kamala Harris
Just talk a little bit about how you reached this conclusion and why you decided to write this piece.

Jeannie Suk Gersen
Yeah, I reached this conclusion because I realized that when so many people were thinking about the question of whether he should step aside as the nominee for the presidential election, what they were really talking about was whether he was unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, even though it was really couched in the form of can he beat Donald Trump? I do realize they are separate questions, but they're obviously very related, because the reason people might have doubts about whether he can beat Donald Trump, one major one, is that voters might not be so confident that he can discharge the powers and duties of his office because of his cognitive impairment. And so as long as we're really talking about cognitive impairment, is there a big gap between, is he able to beat Donald Trump because of his cognitive impairment versus is he able to actually do the job. I don't think that it is a crazy idea to question whether, if you are willing to say he should step aside as the candidate, shouldn't we also consider whether he should step aside as the president now, especially when you think about the fact that doing so might have certain advantages for the presidential race.

Tyler Foggatt
Okay, yeah, we'll get to that later.

Kamala Harris
You know, what this would all mean for Kamala Harris.

Tyler Foggatt
But first, I want to go back.

Kamala Harris
To, you know, what you mentioned earlier, which was the evidence that we saw during the debate of Biden's seeming cognitive decline. Was the debate for you the moment where you started to see this move as really necessary, or were you worried about Biden's fitness before that?

Jeannie Suk Gersen
Ive been thinking about it for a while, because I started thinking about it during Trumps presidency, when many people, many Democrats, were explicitly talking about the 25th Amendment as a way to remove Donald Trump from office based on perceptions of his cognitive impairment and mental unfitness. And so during that conversation, I did a deep dive into the 25th Amendment and the ways in which it allows for that kind of removal from office. And I wrote about it for the New Yorker on multiple occasions. And at least on one of those occasions, I think it was during the presidential race in 2020.

And I talked about Biden's cognitive impairment, as well as far back as 2020. And so without making any conclusions at that time, I knew that this was something with the aging politicians that were dealing with. It was on the public's mind during the Trump presidency. And so therefore, it was on my mind during the Biden presidency, because the cognitive impairment issues, while they may be different for each president, with Donald Trump, the conversation was not so much about dementia, although some of it was about dementia. It was about his narcissism, possible personality disorder. It was those kinds of issues, whereas here, in this case, this is more of a cognitive impairment having to do with age related possible illness. Some people have talked about Parkinson's. Obviously, we have no way of diagnosing a president remotely, but I've been concerned about it or thinking about it and the 25th Amendment for at least four years. And when Robert Hur made his conclusion that Biden should not be prosecuted because he was a well meaning elderly man with a poor memory, I think the blowback to that was very extreme and, in a way, kind of telling, because it would be kind of normal for an 81 year old man to not have the best memory in the world. But I think it was possibly because there was so much anxiety about Bidens cognitive impairment in the air and among his allies that it made sense for them to react very strongly and try to quellenne people's nervousness about it by coming out really hard against that report.

Kamala Harris
The response from Biden about his poor debate performance was that he was just having a bad night, essentially. And while that does seem like a cop out, I think to a lot of Americans, given what we saw on television, it's hard to believe that that could really just be a one time thing. It is true that we have seen him perform a lot better than that in public. Like, you know, think about the state of the union, for example, where he seemed just a lot more energetic and with it. And so given that Biden and his camp are totally denying the idea that there's anything wrong with him health wise. And I guess I'm just wondering how speculation about the president's health can then be used to invoke the 25th Amendment. Like, can you really do that without having concrete evidence or a concrete diagnosis?

Jeannie Suk Gersen
When you say, can you really do that? I think there's a political answer, which may be no, because maybe politically that will not be viable. But in terms of what the Constitution provides, it does not require any kind of.

Kamala Harris
You don't need a doctor's note.

Jeannie Suk Gersen
Medical diagnosis. Yeah, you don't need a medical diagnosis. You need, I mean, there's one way to do it, which is for a president voluntarily, to just say, I'm unable to discharge the powers and duties of the office, and to step aside, and then at that point, the vice president immediately becomes a acting president. That's the voluntary route. But in terms of the constitution, there is an involuntary route, which is for the vice president and a majority of the cabinet to make that declaration that the president is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office. Now, if they don't actually believe that he is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, obviously they cannot do that. But if they do believe that, based on what they have seen both in the debate performance and in their experience with him over these past months during his administration, then, yes, a majority of them can make that declaration, send it on to Congress, and then Biden could, at that point, agree to step aside in favor of the vice president, or he could just object and say, no, I am able to discharge the duties of the office.

And if that were to happen, then it would kick into gear another phase of the process that the 25th Amendment provides for, and that would be for the vice president and the cabinet once again to insist on their declaration that hes unable to perform the duties of the office, at which point both houses of Congress would have to vote by two thirds majority to remove him. Now, its very hard to get two thirds of each body of Congress to do anything. And for them to do this, I very much doubt that it could happen.

Tyler Foggatt
But the argument you make in the.

Kamala Harris
Piece, which is really interesting, is that all Bidens cabinet really needs to do is threaten to start this process. And that might be enough to basically get him to resign willingly, right?

Jeannie Suk Gersen
Yeah. And thats essentially how legal provisions work. Usually theyre there as a backstop so that people will conform their behavior so that it doesnt come to that. And basically what we saw with President Richard Nixon is that he never went through the impeachment process, mainly because he was told by a delegation of members of Congress who went to the White House to inform him that he was going to be impeached, very likely if he didn't step aside and step down. Is that a threat as opposed to just, you know, saying, the reality here is that the votes are there to impeach you, and you could, you know, just step down instead? Now, it's hard to use that as a model because I don't think that people think Biden has done anything wrong. None of this is his fault. None of this is because of his misdeeds or wrongdoing. It's really not like that. But the 25th Amendment is not about someone's fault. And that's possibly why a lot of people thought when the 25th amendment was being discussed during Trump's presidency, some people thought of it as very politically motivated and very irresponsible, because mainly people wanted Trump out of office not for his mental impairment, but mainly because they thought he was doing criminal and very wrong things in the job. But in Biden's case, the 25th Amendment would have nothing to do with his wrongdoing. It has to do only with whether he is able to do the job.

Tyler Foggatt
One thing that I want to clarify, I mean, is this. In some ways, it seems like a pretty bold course of action, but at the same time, is it sort of the only course of action? I mean, I've been trying to think about how it works. If you have a democratic nominee for president who has, you know, all of these delegates who, you know, also refuses to give them up. I mean, if Biden wants to continue running for president and continue being president, even if there are various democratic congresspeople who are upset about it and voters who are kind of wishy washy on him, there's nothing else that can be done besides this, right?

Jeannie Suk Gersen
Yeah. This has been a really interesting series of days because on the one hand, you think, how can a presidential candidate keep going if he loses support among his allies and among his fellow Democrats and especially democratic leaders, if that were to happen? But what we're seeing is the confrontation of the public with a raw power kind of reality, which is no matter how much support Biden were to lose, and he hasn't yet completely lost that support. But if he were even so, the raw reality of the situation is that he could still keep going. And that's just a really interesting reminder that politics is one thing, but at a certain point, even politics runs out. And you have just plain the raw power of an individual who decides that, regardless of what people are saying about whats in the public interest or whats in the political interest of the party, that he can make that call himself.

Kamala Harris
So you alluded to this earlier, but it seems like you would be advocating for this course of action even if Biden werent running for reelection or if he were running for president against someone who wasnt Trump.

Jeannie Suk Gersen
I think that what we have seen is concerning enough. Its ratcheted up in terms of the anxiety and the urgency because of the election. But it should be concerning even if this werent an election year, and it certainly was that way under Donald Trumps presidency, even in a non election year. You know, his opponents were, many of them were concerned about his cognitive impairment. And I do think that this is a situation in which we right now have a possible democratic deficit in the sense that, yes, he is the elected president, but is it him whos actually governing? It doesnt appear that hes necessarily capable. He has even admitted maybe after 08:00 p.m. he might be too impaired or tired to function if he cant even do a debate after 08:00 p.m. i'm not sure how he could deal with a real national security emergency, say.

Tyler Foggatt
Yeah, and he has said that he's going to try to avoid doing any more events at all after eight, right?

Jeannie Suk Gersen
That's right. You know, I don't know how secure we're supposed to feel knowing that the president will be, you know, in bed or resting during those hours and that if he were not resting and if he were, in fact, called upon to do important work during that hour, we have his admission that that is not really a great idea. That's not a wonderful message for the public and also for our foreign adversaries to really be receiving at the moment. So even forgetting about the election, it's highly concerning.

Tyler Foggatt
I know that you're not a fly on the wall in the White House, but I guess I'm wondering what your sense is of the interest in invoking the 25th amendment or using the specter of the 25th Amendment to get Biden to resign. Like, if this is an idea that.

Kamala Harris
You feel like has been picked up and is kind of gaining momentum, or whether people aren't really talking about it beyond Jon Stewart mentioning it kind of.

Tyler Foggatt
Jokingly on the Daily show.

Jeannie Suk Gersen
Yeah, it's interesting because the 25th Amendment, of course, became kind of a, a known amendment during the Trump presidency. And that's why, kind of like the average person who follows politics knows what it is. I think prior to 2020, very few people had heard about the 25th Amendment and couldn't tell you what it was. Now we know what it is. And certainly democratic leaders like Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi, among several others, discussed using the 25th amendment to remove Donald Trump at various times. And so people are very familiar with it. Democratic leaders are very familiar with it. But I dont see an appetite so far about using it to remove Biden from office.

And I think the reason is that people are so focused on the November election and about him stepping aside from the nomination that I think the question of his stepping aside from the office hasn't really entered into the mainstream conversation so much. And also because it's a really drastic and extreme thing to do. It's one thing during the Trump presidency, when Democrats were kind of wishfully talking about the 25th Amendment, knowing full well that that was never, ever going to happen, in that it would have taken republican leaders and republican cabinet members and the vice president to do that. Here. You know, we're having a conversation among the Democratic Party about Biden stepping aside. But I think the idea that the Democrats are going to actually remove their leader from office, I think that's just a really drastic, and I understand it's very drastic. But the 25th Amendment kind of was designed for a situation in which the president may not recognize his own impairment.

And so it's something that ought to be considered. And it turns out also that if he were to be removed from office, that then leaves Kamala Harris as the acting president.

And whether or not we have a mini primary or a contested convention, it gives her a certain advantage in running as the incumbent. It does not make her a lock on the nomination, but it does give her that advantage of incumbency.

And perhaps that kind of stability may be something that some Democrats would want.

Kamala Harris
Yeah.

Tyler Foggatt
I'd like to talk to you more about Kamala Harris and how she could potentially benefit from this. But first, we're gonna take a quick break. You'll hear more of the political scene from the New Yorker in just a moment.

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Tyler Foggatt
So, Jeannie, you've made the point that.

Kamala Harris
Biden should resign from office as soon as possible so that Vice President Kamala Harris has some time to build up credibility as an incumbent. But I'm curious about whether being an incumbent is even an advantage anymore. I'm just thinking about how sitting presidents up for reelection are essentially held responsible for any terrible thing that has happened on their watch and how Biden is kind of in an impossible situation with Israel and Gaza. And he has this baggage that he would then be transferring to Kamala Harris if she were to replace him.

Jeannie Suk Gersen
Yeah, I think that's fair. I think that the other side of that is that so many people in the Democratic Party are pairing their concern about his age related impairment with a lot of praise for what the Biden administration has accomplished. And so they keep pointing to his record as a positive, not as a negative, that he has accomplished so much, hes been a great president, that the administration has been really praiseworthy. And the extent to which that positive feeling about the democratic ticket could be transferred over to Harris.

I think that that advantage could be worth it, even with the baggage that it comes with. I mean, most of the people calling for Joe Biden to step aside are not saying he's done a bad job.

Tyler Foggatt
Well, you say it's so interesting because, I mean, you're totally right that the Biden administration has all of these achievements, like avoiding a recession and all of the infrastructure projects. And I guess, given that we're also in the middle of a conversation about how Biden potentially doesn't seem fit to be president anymore, what is your sense.

Kamala Harris
Of how much an administration can function without a mentally fit president? Theres the example of Reagan, which you mentioned in your piece, who could well have had Alzheimers while he was still in office. And so its interesting that the ship can kind of keep running.

Jeannie Suk Gersen
Yeah. The reality is lots of important people in government have lots of people around them who do a lot of work. And this goes for everyone from Supreme Court justices to presidents to senators.

And it is, of course, possible that even, let's say, Biden were to be completely comatose.

Do I have any doubts that the executive office could keep functioning because other people fill in for the important decisions?

Of course it could.

Would that be the situation that we would want right now? We have to reckon with the fact that we may be dealing with exactly that. Not that he's not present at all, but we know that he's only reliably present during certain hours of the day, according to some sources within his administration.

I dont think that the government stops working after 08:00 p.m. or that White House decision making stops after 08:00 p.m. its just they would have to work around the reality of a president who is only present for a certain amount of time. If they can do that with a president whos available half the days, they certainly could do that with a president whos not available at all. But thats a really not an acceptable way for our democracy to work, which is why I think the 25th amendment is there. It's not there as an anti democratic amendment. It's there because if someone cannot do the job, that's a democratic deficit, not something that promotes democracy.

Tyler Foggatt
Invoking the 25th amendment, since it involves Biden's cabinet, that would mean that Kamala Harris would have to be part of that, and so would Pete Buttigieg, whos also a member of Bidens cabinet, who was also one of the people whos often mentioned as a potential alternative candidate for the Democrats. And I know that your concern here is more about governance than about the election.

But I do wonder if its just kind of politically toxic, if it almost feels like a coup or something but done by the person who would then benefit the most from it, essentially, which is the vice president, who would then become president, you know, ostensibly become the nominee.

Jeannie Suk Gersen
It would be a coup if the people who decided that they were going to declare that he is not able to do the job actually didn't believe that that would be a coup.

But if they sincerely believe that, and they may, then it's the opposite of a coup. It is what the constitution provides that they can do.

Tyler Foggatt
Its due diligence, essentially.

Jeannie Suk Gersen
Yeah. Its like, that is part of, in my view, the constitutional duty given by the constitution to cabinet members and the vice president to make a determination about whether the president can perform the job.

Tyler Foggatt
I want to pivot for a moment to talk more about Donald Trump. You wrote about the idea of using the 25th Amendment against Trump five different.

Kamala Harris
Times for the New Yorker over the course of his presidency. And theres also been a lot of coverage of, you know, his slip ups, memory issues, and then, of course, the concerns about his personality and lack of judgment and whatnot over the years.

If Trump were president right now and he were debating someone and he put on the performance that you saw in the debate from him, if you would be making the same argument that we should be using the 25th Amendment against him, or if you think that there really is a huge disparity between what we're seeing from Biden and from Trump in terms of age related difficulties or impairments.

Jeannie Suk Gersen
Yeah, I think the public has had a lot of opportunity to observe Donald Trumps slip ups and his inability to be coherent at different times. And I do think that the reason that were not really talking about that with respect to this debate is because he is not the current president.

And the 25th amendment is not something you can use just to remove a candidate.

I think that if Trump were to win the election and become the president, I dont expect the 25th Amendment chatter to subside. It will transfer back to questions about Donald Trumps ability to be doing the job. A lot of people who arent talking about it now with respect to Joe Biden will start talking about it again if Donald Trump becomes the president.

Tyler Foggatt
It's incredible that we have two presidents in a row where this is even something that we would have to talk about given that section four of the 25th Amendment, it's never been invoked. Right. I mean, this has never happened before.

Jeannie Suk Gersen
It has never happened before. Section three has been invoked multiple times by presidents who, say, are going under for a surgery or a, that's the temporary one.

Tyler Foggatt
Right. So it's like, I'm giving power to Kamala Harris for the day because I'm getting a colonoscopy. Right.

Jeannie Suk Gersen
Exactly. And the thing is, yes, the 25th amendment then says he can then come back and say, okay, now I am able to discharge the powers and duties and take the power back. But there's nothing in the 25th Amendment that says he has to do that. So in this situation, if President Biden were to just step aside and have Kamala Harris be the acting president, that could go on until the end of his terminal. Theres no requirement that he then come back. Now, its very unlikely that if Joe Biden were ever to resign, that he would do so under a 25th Amendment framework. I cannot imagine that he would say, im going to step down because I am cognitively impaired.

Tyler Foggatt
He would say, im doing this because the voters have spoken and I care about the country. Yeah.

Jeannie Suk Gersen
Yeah. He would do something like that. But the idea is that this provision is there. Section four is also there of the 25th Amendment. And against that backdrop, against that constitutional backdrop, it is something that the leaders of the party have to know is within their constitutional responsibility to evaluate whether the current president is able to do his job. And that is a duty that they owe to the Constitution and also to the american public.

Tyler Foggatt
So this is a bit of a shift in the conversation, but I'm just kind of struck by the irony of us talking about ways to take away powers from the president when he's refusing to give them up voluntarily during a moment when there's so much talk about.

Kamala Harris
The Supreme Court giving presidents essentially more power than ever, or at least making it a lot harder to press criminal charges against a president. And so I'm wondering if you could talk a little bit about the recent Supreme Court decision around presidential immunity, because you mentioned earlier before we started recording that you don't feel like the sky is falling in the same way that a lot of legal thinkers do.

Jeannie Suk Gersen
Yeah. The Supreme Court decided that presidents have criminal immunity, that is, immunity from prosecution for official conduct. And here, the ruling divides into two different types of presidential official acts in areas where the constitution gives the president exclusive constitutional power. Right. So you read the constitution and you go, okay, this is an area which only the president can do this thing, then the president is absolutely immune from prosecution in those areas. And so examples are the president's commanding of the armed forces, pardons appointments, treaty making, or vetoing or signing bills into law. There's no other branch of government that is allowed to do those things. So in Trump's case, the Supreme Court says, when he used the DOJ to convince the states to replace electors with fraudulent slates of electors or trying to get the DOJ to investigate election fraud. You know, that's prosecutorial power, which the Supreme Court says that is in the, you know, exclusive constitutional power of the president. And so, in sum, any prosecutorial authority, if he exercises it, no matter how craven or criminal it may seem, he cannot be prosecuted for that. Now, the good news is that Joe Biden, the effect of this ruling is that he will not be able to be prosecuted for prosecuting Trump. So that's the good news for Biden in this ruling, which has abundant good news for Donald Trump. And then the other part of the ruling is that in areas where the Constitution provides that the president shares power with Congress, so therefore, the president's power, according to the Constitution, is non exclusive.

The Supreme Court says there's at least presumptive immunity.

At least presumptive immunity is a phrase that, you know, means that it's leaving the door open to whether the court could in the future find that there is absolute immunity. But in this case, doesn't decide that. It just says at least presumptive immunity. So basically, where Trump is trying to get the vice president to use his role to alter the election results around January 6, that is in the area of at least presumptive criminal immunity. So, of course, a lot of people are scared that if Trump is in office and he knows he has this level of immunity, then he won't have that deterrence, and he'll just know he can go ahead and do whatever crimes he wants. But, you know, I really do think that part of the design of our constitution is to tell the american public it's really on you. If you elect someone, if you actually elect someone who can't be trusted to not commit crimes blatantly right and left, that's really something to blame the public for.

And I don't know that using criminal law as a backstop was ever going to be a successful strategy to deter someone like Donald Trump.

Tyler Foggatt
We'll have more after the break.

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Tyler Foggatt
So, Jeannie, what kind of response did you get to this piece?

Jeannie Suk Gersen
Well, I don't always get a lot of email response to pieces that I write in the New Yorker.

And I will say that for this piece, what was most striking about it was the breakdown of argument and the extreme presence of profanity in the responses that I have received, words that I cannot say on the radio from, I suppose, Biden Democrats. And I think there's something really distinctive about this moment where there's a lot of panic, there's a lot of nervousness, there's a lot of let's dig in our heels and the sign of breakdown of argument and reason, rationality, the ability to just hold ideas that are dissonant with each other, the idea that you could love this president, think he did a great job, but also doubt whether he's capable of doing the job in the future or capable of winning the election. I just think it's a really troubling moment for democrats, and it's really, really upsetting. And so I think our ability to just get through this without having extreme levels of hostility, that's being tested right now.

Tyler Foggatt
I mean, you mentioned in your piece how poignant and relatable this situation is for a lot of voters. I mean, you have an aging man and his family in denial at the prospect of his decline. I was talking to someone who compared it to when he had to get his dad to give up his drivers license because he was too old to keep driving. And I'm wondering if there's something about that, just voters being able to identify with this situation, having experienced it in their own families and just on a psychological level, being in denial themselves about Biden or just not liking the idea of the democratic party forcing someone out.

Jeannie Suk Gersen
Yeah, I think all of that is right. I think that it's too close to home in multiple ways. One, as you said, because lots of families have these issues of the adult children figuring out what to do about an aging parent as they deteriorate. And people react in lots of different ways. And denial is one of the primary things that certain people report experiencing, the denial of the aging parent and denial of sometimes the children.

I think psychologically, it's often easier to feel angry and anxious about the political situation than to really express or experience it in a conscious way about one's own family. So thats another thing. And I really think that the fact that this is happening in the family of the Democratic Party is also really nerve wracking and anxiety producing.

Kamala Harris
We were talking earlier about how this section of the 25th amendment has never been invoked before, and even if it is the right course of action here, I guess I just wonder what kind of precedent this would set in an age of bad faith politics. I mean, is there a world in which the 25th amendment becomes something akin to impeachment or akin to prosecuting your predecessor, where there's just a risk of it becoming a partisan tool? You use it one time when it makes sense, and then all of a sudden, every single president from here on out is being questioned in terms of his mental capability, his or her mental capability.

Jeannie Suk Gersen
Tyler, I really look back on the days when we didn't have criminal prosecutions of presidents and we didn't have constant talk of criminality of presidents, with a lot of nostalgia. And I wish for the return to those days. And I really also wish we didn't have to talk about the 25th Amendment. I wish that that hadn't happened during Trumps presidency either. And the reason is not because I dont think that it was unjustified either during Trumps presidency or Bidens. Its because I wish the public had not elected people where the conversation starts to become even vaguely plausible. Yeah, but these constitutional amendments and provisions, some of them are there envisioning an extreme situation. I would hope that impeachment would be an extreme situation.

But as you point out, we've used the impeachment clauses a lot or invoked it a lot or talked about it a lot in the past several years. I don't want that state of affairs to continue.

Of course, you're right that once you use something, kind of a dam is broken and then a taboo is lifted, and then you keep doing it and it becomes very tempting. But at the same time, I think it should be a lesson that we should be very careful about who we elect and pay attention to the fact that we don't want to have a situation in which it's even a plausible idea for a president to be removed because he's unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office.

Tyler Foggatt
Yeah. And it seems like we'll be stuck with a situation where regardless of who is elected, we'll be talking about the 25th amendment again. Unless the 25th amendment is used now and Biden is replaced by another candidate.

Jeannie Suk Gersen
Right. Who then happens to win in November.

Tyler Foggatt
Yeah, I guess Trump could still win regardless.

Kamala Harris
And then we'll be here again talking about the 25th amendment and maybe how it's been being used the second time.

Jeannie Suk Gersen
Yeah. The framers had a minimum age for president. They did not think to place a maximum age for president because in their mind, it was obvious that people would not be living this long.

Tyler Foggatt
Yeah.

Jeannie Suk Gersen
Or at least seeking the office of the president at this late stage in their lives.

Tyler Foggatt
Thank you so much, Jeannie.

Jeannie Suk Gersen
Thank you, Tyler.

Tyler Foggatt
This has been the political scene. I'm Tyler Foggatt. This episode was produced by Michelle Moses and edited by Gianna Palmer with production assistance from Mike Kutchman. Our executive producer is Steven Valentino. Chris Bannon is Conde Nast head of global audio. Our theme music is by Allison Leighton Brown. Enjoy your week and we'll see you next Wednesday.

G
Politics has never been stranger or more online, which is why the politics team at WIRED is making a new show, Wired Politics lab. It's all about how to navigate the endless stream of news and information and what to look out for. Each week on the show, we'll dig into far right platforms, AI chat bots, influencer campaigns, and so much more. Wired Politics Lab launches Thursday, April 11. Follow the show wherever you get your podcasts.

Kamala Harris
From. Prxheendez.