The Daily Blast: Finally, Trump’s Ex-Allies Call for 25th Amendment: “He’s Gone Insane”

I'm your host, Greg Sargent. Donald Trump's threat to obliterate Iranian civilization entirely has prompted some surprisingly

powerful pushback from his own former allies on the MAGA movement.

Some have even suggested it's time to invoke the 25th Amendment to remove him from office. We're recording this before the Tuesday night deadline that Trump imposed for Iran to reopen the Strait of Hormuz or face total civilization all erasure. But whatever happens on that front, the conversation about Trump's undeniable unfitness to service president has now been opened in a fresh way.

The media is now covering this question. How do we keep it going? We're talking about this with Jennifer Rubin, editor-in-chief of the contrarium who has a good new piece laying out that Trump is a madman who cannot remain in office. It's lovely to be here, so just to reiterate listeners will be hearing this after we

find out whether Trump decided to wipe out a country of 93 million people. The Trump tweet that threatened this, as you all know, red is follows.

"A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again.

I don't want that to happen, but it probably will." Jen, maybe by Wednesday morning, Iran will have made a deal with Trump involving his demand to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, maybe the more we'll escalate. But either way, Trump's conduct on this war, along with so much else, has revealed him to be absolutely unfit to be president.

“It sure took people long enough to figure this out, isn't it?”

It sure did, and let's be clear, the threat itself is a violation of international law. The threat of genocide is not allowed. So even if we don't get the worst of the worse, having made the threat, he has put us in a position in which the United States is essentially threatening to do what we have condemned Russia for doing in Ukraine.

And in invoking this apocalyptic religious kind of fervor, he has ironically mimicked the Islamic fundamentalism and translated it into his weird Christian white nationalist view of the world. "Yeah, I think the fundamentalists turn out to be us, right?" "Yes, exactly.

I'm sure the Iranians are scratching their head, wondering what happened here." "Well, let's listen to some of these former Trump allies calling for Trump's removal. Here's conspiracy theorist Alex Jones asking, "How do we twenty-fifth amendment his ass?" "Yes, he used twenty-fifth amendment as a verb, and his guest offers an ideal, listen."

How do we twenty-fifth amendment his ass?

The problem is they get to twenty-fifth amendment, harder than impeachment.

“You have to get two-thirds of the house and two-thirds of the--”

"So what do we do from a tackle Trump and pretend he's president and publicly report that he's going through a health issue and vance takeover? It literally needs to be something like that. It's that bad." So, Jen, I'm going to try to use this as a verb now.

I think that twenty-fifth amendmenting his ass is, in fact, a good idea. What did you think of that? "It is a good idea, but it's also improbable to say the least. It would require G.D. vance to show some real spine and statesmanship. It would require a majority of his cabinet to go along, and they are filled with deluded

totes, and ultimately he would be Congress, J.D. vance, to pull this off. None of that is happening.

“So I think it is important to raise it because I think there has to be a greater discussion”

of his mental and fitness, his emotional deterioration, which the legacy media has consistently refused to confront. We did have a few other MAGA types, former Trump allies calling for removal in response to Trump's threat, former Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene tweeted this in response to Trump, quote, "Twenty-fifth amendment, not a single bomb has dropped on America.

We cannot kill an entire civilization. This is evil and madness," close quote. You know, Jen, Marjorie Taylor Greene has actually been very powerful in her criticism of Trump. Today, she called on everyone in Trump's administration to stop worshiping the president

and intervene in Trump's madness.

He has gone insane, and all of you are complicit, close quote.

It's true. He has gone insane, and it's true. They are all complicit. Jen, I don't think it's a small thing that someone with his large of following as M.T.G. said this.

I think I can see the outlines of a large coalition behind removal. Let's call it the 25th Amendment coalition. Exactly. And obviously, there are people like Tucker Carlson and the rest of them. I think this is what happens when you fall out of the cult.

Suddenly, everything becomes very clear. You're willing to abandon your idolatry. You're willing to assess his words as they are spoken or written.

“And that's what's happened with these, frankly, very fringe characters.”

So I don't want to attribute a great intellectual breakthrough in terms of democracy or

tolerance or rule of law. But at least they see Trump for what he is. They can at least now be truth tellers about who he is, how deranged he is, and how dangerous he is. My fear is if we do not wind up in an apocalypse situation, everyone will reset and

we'll go back to normal and the same kind of excuse mongering and rationalization will take hold and Trump will get credit for not blowing up the world as opposed to these people beginning to carry through on their constitutional obligations, the 25th Amendment in impeachment, civil oversight, civil control of the power of the purse, and the power to declare a war.

How about starting there? Well, absolutely.

“And I think there's a real danger of the whole world moving on past this former Trump”

advisor Anthony Scaramucci also joined the 25th Amendment train. He tweeted this quote, "Wake up, he is calling for a nuclear strike, seek his removal immediately." Close quote. Now, here again, we're recording this before Trump's deadline of APM on Tuesday night,

so we don't know whether he's going to obliterate Iran right now, but either way, I think it's probable that he won't use nukes, and if he doesn't use nukes he'll get credit for that, which is sort of deeply perverse in another way. Exactly. We are now reduced, and this is why Trump does, of course, he keeps a slouching towards

Gomorrah, as not just as Bork once said, this is the defining deviance downward, that if he only kills thousands of people by targeting illegally civilians, that's he gets credit for, that's insanity, and this is how we got to where we are, by making excuses by allowing Republicans to allocate their common sense decency, not to mention their constitutional oaths.

So we're now at the spot where the Pope and Marjorie Taylor Green are on the same page.

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So that's basically the size of that and Tucker Carlson, who had a really interesting way of

talking about this as well. He was responding to Trump's talk about bombing all of Iran's power plants and bridges. Listen to Tucker here, courtesy of our on Rupar. It is vile on every level. It begins with a promise to use the US military, our military, to destroy civilian infrastructure

of the country, those people who are in direct contact with the president need to say,

no, I'll resign. I'll do whatever I can do legally to stop this because this is insane, and if given you what I'm not carrying it out. So Jen, there, Tucker isn't quite invoking the 25th Amendment, but he's suggesting that Trump was talking about giving illegal orders and urging people inside not to obey them

because Trump has unfit. It was the strong implication from Tucker. Here, again, there's the possibility of broad coalition of agreement. A number of Democrats have urged military officials not to obey illegal orders, just as Tucker did.

I want to hear that get louder.

I want to hear more people out there, Democrats, maybe the occasional Republican, whatever former maga acolyte wants to join. I'm good. They all have to get out there and say, don't follow illegal orders. You don't have to do that.

You cannot do it. This is why they went so nuts when those six Democratic congressmen and senators made the video saying exactly what you just said because they want the military to be obedient to them, to be dussled to simply salute and follow orders.

“That's why Exepp has fire a whole slew of jagged people while he is excused, war crimes,”

why he is excused, bad behavior, why he is advanced this view of war, that the law of engagement and the laws of international humanity are somehow flawed in a hindrance to us. That's how we got to where we are. Now, exactly as I wrote today, and many others did, of course this is right. The high brass and frankly, all the way down the chain of command have an obligation not

to commit genocide. In some sense, Trump made it easy because he clarified exactly what his goal is. He wants their civilization to die. That is genocide. There is no excuse, there is no rationalization that they can come up with now for carrying

out orders to decimate civilian neighborhoods, power plants, infrastructure. They clearly know what Trump's intent is, and they know what the results of that action would be. And there will come a time, maybe it will be a new set of it, normal trials. Maybe it will be military discipline down the road, but there will be a time of reckoning

where these people have to be held responsible for what they did and what they said.

And they never should have crossed the line the first time when Trump ordered extra judicial

killings on the high seas. Had they said no then, we likely would not be where we are now. That's a really important point. You're talking there about the suspected or alleged drug smugglers in the Caribbean Sea.

“Trump has been just blowing them up with a band, and I think at this point it's become”

such a regular occurrence that apparently registers at all anymore, but these are basically civilians and they are suspects who got no due process of any kind and were executed in international waters that is illegal. And by the way, just to go back to a theme we brought up earlier and which Trump kind of gets created on this curve, now that he went out there and he said, I want to erase

a whole civilization. People are going to sort of move on and forget about the fact that he just talked about blowing up bridges and power plants, which itself is a war crime. You can't blow up civilian infrastructure like that. You wrote in your piece, which is really good, that the last trip wire, as you put it in this

situation, the last sort of set of political guardrails that could possibly exist may be the prospect of accountability later for people in the chain of command, you seem somewhat confident that there will be accountability like that. I don't know if I'm there yet, but can you talk me into it like, you know, they don't nobody in the military seems all that worried about getting prosecuted or facing accountability

for the executions in the Caribbean. I mean, we'll see what happens in this situation, obviously, but do you think there will be accountability later? I do.

“And I think they're kidding themselves if they think Trump is going to pardon everyone, particularly”

those people who have left their offices prior to the time Trump leaves.

criminal prosecution, but military justice, really, that's what they're banking on.

And how far down the chain of command is it going to be? Doesn't extend beyond the joint chiefs, what about the generals, what about the kernels all the way down? So if they feel comfortable leaving their subordinates to swing in the wind, they will continue to go forward.

But at some point, they have to man up and be willing to quit, be willing to go before the national audience and say enough, we cannot, we will not commit war crimes. By the way, if you wanted an argument for throwing the Republicans out of power in both houses,

“it's that they wouldn't even stop him from committing genocide, that's what totes they”

are. That, I think, is basically not in doubt. And by the way, I will point out that some Democrats have come out and suggested that

there will be prosecutions, for instance, representative Ted Lou had this amazing tweet.

We did this right at the joint chiefs of staff. He said, quote, eradicating a whole civilization constitutes a war crime. You must disobey that order. If you commit war crimes, the next administration will prosecute you, close quote. And I'm going to read one more from Senator Ron Weiden, quote, Republicans who don't

stop him will have blood on their hands and anyone who carries out an order to bomb civilian targets will be complicit in war crimes and will be held accountable, close quote. Jen, both of those Democrats, said very clearly, accountability is coming later under a future

“administration with a real attorney general, what do you make of it?”

I think they're very serious, whether that will be possible, what Trump will do in terms of partners we don't know, but it is very important that they say that, and it would be awfully nice if some Republicans other than Marjorie Taylor Greene would echo that. Where is Mitch McConnell? The guy who said, oh, we don't really have to impeach and exclude him from office because

the criminal law will take care of him. Where are the Republicans who are supposed to care about constitutional order and the rule of law? They're nowhere to be seen, it would sure be helpful if they showed up one day. It sure would.

Well, Jen, any closing thoughts on this? I have to say that I think that it's heartening that we're seeing, even these whack-job megaboises come out and say the obvious, which is that Trump is fundamentally unfifficured for office. Again, I think that there's actually the possibility of a coalition behind this idea.

I don't know how big it is, and as you pointed out, the practical hurdles to removal are immense. It's not going to happen, obviously, it's just not going to happen, but the more talking about it, the better, the more voters are talking about it, the better, the more Democrats are talking about accountability in the future, the better.

We've got to keep this on the burner. It's got to keep going. That's the basic bottom line here. We can't have a backslide out of this. We've got to keep focus on it.

Absolutely, and the fact that we may duck one disaster does not mean we should be blind to the next one.

“And the one after that, that's how we got to where we are by excusing bad and increasingly”

crazy behavior and rhetoric. So perhaps this will be an inflection point. I certainly hope so. I hope it will be so for voters when they consider who they trust to hold offices. In November, but this has to be a wake-up call for all of us.

Trump is a pathological narcissist. He has no idea what he's doing. He's got no plan, and he would come right up and maybe over the brink of really cataclysmic war. Well, when folks listen to this, they will know more than we know now, Jen.

I am on the edge of my seat here, it's very literally. Jen Rubin really awesome to talk to you. Thanks so much for coming on.

It's always a pleasure, Greg.

Thanks so much.