Representative Doug Collins (R-Ga.) tweeted on Sunday that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi “does not have the mental fitness to serve as Speaker.” He followed that up with another tweet on Monday: “Nancy Pelosi’s unwillingness to abide by the Constitution, combined with her recent actions, call into question her own mental fitness.”
On Monday he introduced a resolution to remove Pelosi from office, reviewing some of her “recent actions”:
- [The Speaker] has spent the majority of the House of Representatives’ time pursuing baseless and fruitless investigations;
- On October 31, 2019, Speaker Nancy Pelosi oversaw the first party-line vote to begin an impeachment inquiry into a president in the history of our country;
- [She] ripped up the State of the Union speech … before the American people;
- [She] visited a shuttered hair salon in San Francisco where she received a blow-out without wearing a mask in violation of San Francisco’s laws … [and then] cast blame on the salon’s owner for ‘setting her up’; and
- [She] appeared confused [in an interview on ABC News] and exhibited bizarre behavior … blurting out randomly ‘Good Morning, Sunday morning’.
The event most likely to have galvanized Collins’ resolution to remove the speaker was her move on Friday to create a commission that could investigate a president’s fitness for office under the 25th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
Section 4 of that amendment says, “Whenever the Vice President and a majority of either the principal officers of the executive departments or of such other body as Congress may provide, transmit … 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.” (Emphasis added.)
That “other body,” under Pelosi’s plan, would consist of 16 members, half appointed by the Democratic leadership and the other half by the Republican leadership, which would then appoint a 17th member. They would be doctors and psychiatrists and “former high-ranking Executive Branch officers.”
In announcing the plan, Pelosi said it had nothing to do with the present president: “This legislation applies to future presidents, but we are reminded of the necessity of action by the health of the current president.”
The current president took umbrage at Pelosi’s insinuation, tweeting “Crazy Nancy is the one who should be under observation. They don’t call her Crazy for nothing!”
The Wall Street Journal editorialized that such a committee “would make the 25th Amendment a weapon for political scheming and abuse.… When opposing parties control Congress and the White House, there would be pressure for members to abuse medical judgment for partisan ends.”
Senator Kelly Loeffler (R-Ga.) agreed with the Journal, criticizing Pelosi for “weaponization of the 25th Amendment … in an attempt to attack President Donald J. Trump,” adding:
Speaker Pelosi’s announcement is just her latest scheme to attack President Donald J. Trump. From the day President Trump was sworn in, Nancy Pelosi has tried to overturn the results of the 2016 election. From the Russia collusion hoax to the sham impeachment and now the 25th Amendment farce, Nancy Pelosi has disgraced the office of Speaker in a desperate attempt to rig the system and seize power.
If she is still serious about holding office, she should put a mask on, hit the salon and respect the election results when Donald Trump is re-elected for four more years.
According to the president, Pelosi’s move isn’t an attack on him but on Joe Biden, should he by some chance become president. He tweeted: “Crazy Nancy Pelosi is looking at the 25th Amendment in order to replace Joe Biden with Kamala Harris. The Dems want that to happen fast because Sleepy Joe is out of it!!!”
Senator Loeffler also introduced a resolution in the Senate, condemning Pelosi’s effort to create her commission:
Whereas the Speaker of the House of Representatives intends to introduce legislation creating a Commission on Presidential Capacity to Discharge the Powers and Duties of the Office for the purposes of removing President Donald J. Trump from office under section 4 of the 25th Amendment;
Whereas the Speaker of the House of Representatives has failed to put forward a just cause for invoking the 25th Amendment; and
Whereas the proposed actions by the Speaker of the House of Representatives are an unprecedented attempt to remove a duly elected President….
Resolved, That the Senate disapproves of the statements and actions of the Speaker of the House of Representatives and the Democratic Caucus of the House of Representatives for politicizing the 25th Amendment of the Constitution of the United States.
