Donald Trump on Saturday moved to amend the 25th Amendment to allow Congress to impeach the vice president for covering up the president’s incapacity less than two months after President Joe Biden dropped out of the 2024 race because of his age and accuracy.
“I support amending the 25th Amendment to make it clear that if the vice president lies or engages in a conspiracy to cover up the incapacity of the president of the United States — if you do that by covering up the president of the United States That’s grounds for immediate impeachment and removal from office because that’s what they did,” the former president said during a rally in Mosine, Wisconsin.
The former president has repeatedly and without evidence accused Vice President Kamala Harris and Democrats more broadly of covering up Biden’s health — particularly his mental state — after the president’s disastrous June debate performance that ultimately led to his exit from the race. Some Republicans in Congress had called for invoking the 25th Amendment, which provides a process for removing power from a sitting president, to remove Biden after the debate — the same rule Democrats tried to use against Trump on the 6th. January 2021, in the United States. Capitol riot. But changing the constitutional amendment, as Trump is now proposing, is highly unlikely.
Trump’s remarks on Saturday are also the latest sign of his continuing struggle to adjust to running against a new opponent. Trump has repeatedly lamented the change at the top of the Democratic ticket and has even appeared at times to be confused about who he is running against.
“If he didn’t go to that debate, he would still be running,” Trump told his crowd of protesters.
Trump’s return to Wisconsin, a key battleground state he lost to Biden in 2020 and where polling averages show him narrowly trailing Harris, comes as his campaign moves into seven core battleground states on an electoral map that appears to be shrinking. president.
At the same time, Harris appeared at a spice shop in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where he is preparing for a largely public debate against Trump. There, he told reporters he was “honored” to have former Republican Vice President Dick Cheney and his daughter, former Wyoming Rep. Liz Cheney. Both recently said they would return Harris.
“Both of them, as leaders who are respected, are making an important statement — that it’s OK and important to put country before party, and I’m honored to have their support,” Harris said.
Trump blasted the elder Cheney as an “irrelevant RINO” and chided his daughter for her involvement in the House Jan. 6 committee in a post on his Truth Social platform on Friday, but made no mention of the remarks during his rally on Saturday.
Instead, in a speech intended to focus on “draining the swamp,” Trump promised to “trim the fat from our government” by creating a commission on “government efficiency” — an idea he endorsed earlier this week and first floated by ally Elon Musk. He repeated his promise to cut 10 federal regulations for every new one. And he called again to dissolve the Ministry of Education.
But in typical Trump fashion, the former president digressed to other topics — and off script. He falsely claimed sentencing in the hush money case was delayed until after the election “because everyone understands there is no case because I did nothing wrong”. (Trump was convicted of 34 felonies.)
He joked that he was “very offended” by Russian President Vladimir Putin’s apparent mockery of endorsing Harris. He also claimed, without evidence, that immigrants would “take over” Colorado if he didn’t win the state in November. And he called it a “great miracle” that Biden “won” the 2020 election — an acknowledgment of his own defeat four years ago.
Harris’ campaign released new television ads Saturday reminding voters that Trump has taken credit for the fall Roe v. Wade – seats coming up in Wisconsin and other battleground states – the former president continued his attempts to thread the difficult needle on the issue. Trump said he made a “big deal” by appointing three Supreme Court justices to return abortion cases to the states, and he ruled out allowing the procedure later in pregnancy. But he also expressed support for exceptions to the abortion ban for rape, incest and the life of the mother.
“I agree with exceptions,” Trump said. “You have to go with your heart.”
