@Olivier5,
The Founders didn't write the 25th Amendment, congressional lawyers and members did in 1965 spurred on by the Kennedy assassination and the possibility that he might have remained alive albeit in a brain dead state.
Section 4 of the 25th Amendment provides a specific course of action that is to be followed:
Quote:Section 4. Whenever the Vice President and a majority of either the principal officers of the executive departments or of such other body as Congress may by law provide, transmit to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives their written declaration that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, the Vice President shall immediately assume the powers and duties of the office as Acting President.
Thereafter, when the President transmits to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives his written declaration that no inability exists, he shall resume the powers and duties of his office unless the Vice President and a majority of either the principal officers of the executive department or of such other body as Congress may by law provide, transmit within four days to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives their written declaration that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office. Thereupon Congress shall decide the issue, assembling within forty-eight hours for that purpose if not in session. If the Congress, within twenty-one days after receipt of the latter written declaration, or, if Congress is not in session, within twenty-one days after Congress is required to assemble, determines by two-thirds vote of both Houses that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, the Vice President shall continue to discharge the same as Acting President; otherwise, the President shall resume the powers and duties of his office.[3]
It doesn't prescribe the means by which the VP and Cabinet members are to support their claim that the VP is unfit, but you can sure as hell bet it won't be on the say so of a WaPo columnist or, for that matter, an army of quack partisan "mental health care professionals" providing diagnoses on the web.
The Amendment was properly crafted to avoid, as best as possible, political influence. First of all, it takes multiple, presumably loyal members of the Executive branch to begin the process, and a VP who
really wants to be president can't do it alone. Secondly, the president can contest it, and I would imagine most would provide a report from their doctor supporting their claim of fitness. The VP and Cabinet would then have to decide to try again which addresses the possibility of a hack doctor for the president but also requires gravitas on the part of those wanting to oust him. By this time the nation will be weighing in on the process and any effort that appears to be politically driven will result in a public outcry. I would imagine that during this process and prior to the second submission an agreement might be worked out whereby the president submitted to one or more independent doctors. Only if the second submission was made would congress get involved and the possibility of rank politics driving the final decision arise. However while the "high crimes and misdemeanors" is sufficently ambiguous to allow for the impeachment process to be purely political the same is not so with the 25th Amendment, and as little faith I have in the integrity of members of Congress, it difficult for me to imagine two-thirds of them be willing to turn a process like this into a political circus. If they did, and, at least two-thirds of the American people were convinced the president was truly nuts the congressional circus performers would have hell to pay.
It is impossible to imagine the process starting based on the supposed signs that you, Robinson and other opponents of the president claim to observe. It is almost impossible to imagine the process would start if multiple legitimate doctors could not agree that the president was unfit. The Amendment contemplates a president being unambiguously unable to serve, but wisely makes it difficult to abuse for political purposes.
The only way I can see the VP the Cabinet and two-thirds of both Houses of Congress conspiring together to use this amendment to oust a president who is not truly physically or mentally unfit to serve is if he had revealed himself to be a tyrant or a tyrant in the making, and if that were the case such an effort would never succeed, since a tyrant would never allow it to.
Journalists and citizens have the right to speak about almost anything under the sun so Robinson doing so is not an issue of free speech or freedom of the press, and no one is attempting to see him censored. If he wants to use his position to be an irresponsible political hack, he's free to, and everyone else is free to criticize him for it.
If he wants to waste space in his paper ruminating about a process that, at present and in, at least, the near future has zero chance of being implemented he certainly can, but he is fantasizing and indulging the fantasies of his rabid readers. No amount of
buzz generated by Robinson or other Trump opponents is going to lead to the VP and Cabinet invoking the 25th Amendment, but it is nasty mudslinging. He is trying to perpetuate a meme that the President of the United States is mentally ill and unfit to serve in office. It is classic yellow journalism.
