Democratic Rep. Jackie Speier is voicing concerns over President Trump’s mental fitness and calling for him to be removed from office through the 25th Amendment.
In comments Tuesday on CNN, Speier said there’s “a growing mountain of evidence that the president has been very erratic” and “has shown a mental instability.”
“It was crystallized last week with a combination of his comments about fire and fury that he offered up against Kim Jong-un and North Korea and how we would take him out, followed by his back and forth on Charlottesville and how he really became almost abusive in calling people out when he was really telling from his soul what he thought about the Charlottesville incident,” she told CNN’s Jim Sciutto.
“If you go back in time, like six years, and watch interviews that he gave then where he could put a whole sentence together, but now tends to put a few words together and then goes off into another sentence unrelated to the first,” she added. “It is an indication to me that there is some trouble there that is more than just a one-off.”
Speier, who serves on the Armed Services and Intelligence Committees, said she is genuinely worried for the American people.
“I am concerned about him having his finger on the button that could send nuclear warheads around the world.”
CNN reached out to the White House for comment Wednesday but has not received a response.
The California congresswoman is among several Democrats in Congress to publicly suggest Trump should be removed from office through a never-before invoked section of the 25th amendment, which allows the vice president and a majority of the Cabinet to declare him unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office.
The amendment was adopted in 1967, less than four years after the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, to establish procedures in case the president or vice president are unable to perform their duties.
Speier gave the example of George W. Bush as precedent for invoking the 25th Amendment. It was used while Bush had a colonoscopy in 2007 and temporarily transferred presidential powers to Vice President Dick Cheney.
It has never been used to oust a sitting president for a perceived inability to do the job.
Speier said there’s been talk on both sides of the aisle about the President’s fitness for office.
“At some point, we’ve got whispering about this and talking in terms we can all understand. If the emperor has no clothes, then it is time for not just the child to speak up, it is time for members of Congress who serve on behalf of the American people to speak up.”
Speier spoke to CNN before Trump’s speech Tuesday night at a rally in Phoenix, Arizona, where the President addressed his much-criticized response to recent violence in Charlottesville, Virginia, and berated media coverage of the resulting political fallout over his rhetoric on race.
Trump also attacked Arizona’s two Republican senators, hinted at pardoning a controversial former Arizona sheriff and signaled that a federal government shutdown could loom in the weeks ahead — all while leading chants of “build the wall.”
The speech came a night after Trump had boosted the hopes of some Republicans by delivering a measured speech on his plans for future US military involvement in Afghanistan. But his remarks in Arizona raised fresh questions among some critics, including James Clapper, former director of National Intelligence, over Trump’s fitness for office.
