Has President Trump finally gone too far? His expletive-filled tirade on Easter Sunday and his even more brazen message Tuesday morning, vowing to wipe out an entire population, have ignited a wave of backlash, even from some of his most ardent supporters.
On Sunday, Trump threatened Iran on Truth Social. “Tuesday will be Power Plant Day, and Bridge Day, all wrapped up in one, in Iran,” he wrote. “There will be nothing like it!!! Open the F***in’ Strait, you crazy bastards, or you’ll be living in Hell – JUST WATCH! Praise be to Allah.”
Experts and journalists pointed out that targeting infrastructure amounted to war crimes, but the president told reporters on Monday that he was “not at all” concerned about that possibility.
But Trump didn’t stop there. On Tuesday morning, as his 8 p.m. deadline for Iran to open the Strait of Hormuz ticked closer, he went even further in another Truth Social post: "a whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again,” he wrote. “I don’t want that to happen, but it probably will… We will find out tonight, one of the most important moments in the long and complex history of the World.”
The post hasn’t just sparked a wave of criticism — it’s also inspired calls to remove Trump from office using the 25th Amendment. Here’s what that could involve, who’s pushing for it, and how likely it is to happen.
What is the 25th Amendment, and could it be used to remove Trump?
The 25th Amendment was ratified in 1967, after the Kennedy assassination, to resolve issues surrounding presidential and vice presidential succession. Section four is what comes into play here — it provides a procedure for declaring the president “unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office.” But the process for using it is complex and requires a significant level of consensus among members of the president’s inner circle.
To invoke section four of the 25th Amendment, the vice president and either a majority of the Cabinet or “such other body as Congress” would write a letter to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House expressing that the president is unfit. At that point, the vice president would become acting president.
But it’s not that simple: If the president disagrees and insists that he can still serve, he can write a letter stating as much to those same congressional leaders and remain in office. That is, unless the Vice President and cabinet stand firm. Within four days of the president’s letter, they’d have to kickstart a procedure that would require two-thirds of Congress to vote to remove him.
In other words, section four is a high bar to clear — especially in this political environment, when Trump, despite all the criticism he’s weathered since taking office, enjoys the broad support of his party — and it has never been invoked. Still, that hasn’t stopped Democratic lawmakers and some Republicans from pushing for it anyway.
Who wants to invoke the 25th Amendment?
Some lawmakers are calling on the cabinet to invoke the 25th Amendment to declare Trump mentally unfit and remove him from office.
On Sunday, Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy tweeted, “If I were in Trump's Cabinet, I would spend Easter calling constitutional lawyers about the 25th Amendment.”
Other Democratic lawmakers, including California Rep. Ro Khanna, Arizona Rep. Yassamin Ansari, and Massachusetts Sen. Ed Markey, have similarly demanded Trump’s removal from office.
Ex-GOP Congressman Joe Walsh said Trump “will forever be a stain on this country. And the world.”
Anthony Scaramucci, who had a notoriously brief tenure as the White House communications director during Trump's first term, responded to Trump's social media post with one of his own: "It was at this point that our Founders thought the best thing to do would be to remove a mad man who has the executive office. It became more formalized with the 25th amendment, but more people now should be calling for this man’s removal."
Former White House counsel Ty Cobb told Jim Acosta, "Given the fact that the Cabinet will not invoke the 25th Amendment for a man who is clearly insane — this war highlights that and these screeds that come out nightly, you know, at 2 a.m. or 4 a.m., or whatever time Trump decides to vent without oversight — it highlights the level of his insanity and depravity.”
And while it’s still unlikely that the backlash will cause an ouster, some of the president’s vocal allies have turned on him — though his allies in Congress seem to be maintaining their support.
Former-strong-Trump-ally-turned-recent-critic Marjorie Taylor Greene, posted on X, “25TH AMENDMENT!!! Not a single bomb has dropped on America. We cannot kill an entire civilization.”
Even the conspiracy theorist Alex Jones has turned on Trump. “How do we 25th Amendment his ass?” he said on Infowars on Monday. He shared stronger words on X, saying that Trump’s threats on Tuesday amount to genocide. “Trump literally sounds like an unhinged super villain from a Marvel comic movie,” he wrote.
On his podcast Monday night, Tucker Carlson launched into a tirade against Trump’s Easter posts, calling them “vile on every level.” “How dare you speak that way on Easter morning to the country?” he continued. He also called the president’s promise to destroy Iran’s infrastructure “a war crime” and called out his invocation of Allah: “No decent person mocks other people’s religions.” Carlson did not say Trump should be removed from office, but he did say, “no president should mock Islam,” adding, “That’s not your job.”
Trump himself has talked about the 25th Amendment recently. During a March 26th cabinet meeting, when speaking about the Iran war, he said, "I can't say what we're going to do, because if I did, I wouldn't be sitting here for long... They'd institute the 25th amendment, which they didn't do with Biden."
