Late Sunday night, Utah Sen. Mike Lee called for the removal of President Joe Biden from office via the 25th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.
Lee was responding to a Daily Mail article about a bizarre scene that unfolded during a rambling press conference following Biden’s landing in Vietnam. While attempting to answer shouted questions from the media, Biden was apparently unaware that his microphone had been cut off, CNN reported. The president then shuffled off the stage as White House spokeswoman Karine Jean-Pierre announced that the event was over.
“Great time to deploy the 25th Amendment,” Lee posted to X, formerly known as Twitter.
If Biden were to be forced out of office via the 25th Amendment, which outlines the removal and succession of a sitting president, Vice President Kamala Harris would assume the presidency.
“President Biden’s inability ‘to discharge the powers and duties of his office’ has alarmed the world with increasing frequency, whether stumbling through indecipherable remarks, stopped from answering questions by his own staff, wandering off abruptly, or misremembering his own history,” said Billy Gribbin, Lee’s communications director, in a statement to The Salt Lake Tribune. “America deserves a Commander in Chief with the capacity to command.”
This is not the first time Lee has questioned Biden’s ability to continue to serve. In February, during Biden’s State of the Union address, Lee said of the president, “He’s not well.”
Lee frequently posts trolling and provocative content on his personal account.
Last week, he made unsubstantiated accusations that the military used a secret influence program on Americans and called for cutting funding to the Pentagon amid a debate over abortion policy. Lee also recently suggested that the flooding that left thousands of people stranded at the Burning Man festival in the Nevada desert was “God’s judgment” for the sexual promiscuity at the event.
The 25th Amendment was ratified in 1967 following the assassination of President John F. Kennedy and established a clear line of succession in the event of an emergency. the fourth section of the amendment allows for the removal of a president who is incapacitated or the forcible removal of that president from power.
In such a scenario, the chief executive must be declared unfit to continue in office by the vice president and a majority of the cabinet or by Congress. The president can appeal to Congress, who then vote on the matter.
That particular provision of the 25th Amendment has never been used — but has been considered.
After the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol by a mob of former President Donald Trump supporters, members of Trump’s cabinet discussed using the 25th Amendment to remove him from office but did not follow through, according to ABC News.
At the end of former President Ronald Reagan’s second term, administration officials worried Reagan — who was later diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease — had become uninterested in leading the country and contemplated invoking the amendment, The New Yorker reported.
