Trump’s Wild Press Sec Plea Sparks Fresh 25th Amendment Talk

The 25th Amendment talk is theater and everyone involved knows it. Section 4 needs the VP and a Cabinet majority to sign off, and this Cabinet is a collection of loyalists who got their jobs by never telling him no. Vance isn't going to lead a coup against the man who put him a heartbeat from the presidency.

What actually bothers me is that the press secretary position has been reduced to a casting call. Dana White is a fight promoter, not a spokesperson, and the AI image of him at the podium is the joke the administration keeps telling on itself. Meanwhile the Strait of Hormuz is closed, gas prices are choking working families, and the Epstein files are still sitting in a drawer somewhere. But sure, let's all pretend a UFC promoter at the briefing room is the crisis.

So Trump is offering the White House press secretary job to a UFC promoter and staffing the podium with fighters, then people are supposed to treat this as normal presidential business. The 25th Amendment has a process for incapacity, but apparently the country has to watch the president turn the briefing room into a fight card first.

Teamster for 22 years here. THE DAILY BEAST, like all these owner class rags, always pretends the rich are playing chess when they're really just playing us. Trump wants to put a fighter in the press secretary spot because he doesn't want anyone asking real questions. He wants to keep us distracted from how he's screwing over working families with his high gas prices and inflation, and how he's trying to bury the Epstein files. He's not crazy, he's a grifter, and the billionaires protecting him aren't looking out for us, they're looking out for their own wallets.

I coach my son's travel team and I've had to explain to a twelve year old why the group chat joke went too far. Same lesson applies here: a president posting an AI picture of Dana White at the podium is a stunt, and Rosie O'Donnell calling for the 25th Amendment over a stunt is theater. Section 4 needs the VP and a majority of the Cabinet, and this Cabinet isn't going to do it over a troll post. If people want him gone, they already have the mechanism from Tuesday, and it isn't the 25th.

Section 4 of the 25th Amendment requires the Vice President and a majority of the principal officers of the executive department to transmit a written declaration that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office. Notice who that excludes: the public, editorial boards, and Rosie O'Donnell. It is a mechanism for an internally negotiated transfer, and it has never been used, partly because it requires the cabinet to declare its own boss incapacitated and then sustain that position through a congressional vote. The online invocation of it after every unhinged post has become a ritual that mistakes a constitutional procedure for a sentiment. If the argument is that the President is unfit, the remedy the Framers actually provided is impeachment, and the remedy the voters provided is an election. Neither of those is easier, which is presumably why people keep reaching for the one clause that sounds dramatic and requires no coalition to activate.

Put the actual White House briefings on camera and keep the records. If the president thinks a UFC spectacle belongs at the podium, the public deserves to see who's running the show. I hope the footage leaks.