You know things are going great when you feel the need to explain to Congress that the president is “very very sane.”
Such was the case for Heath Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who appeared before the House Education and Workforce Committee on Friday to defend his own record, and that of his increasingly erratic boss, Donald Trump.
During a round of questioning with Rep. Mark Takano (D-Calif.), Kennedy was asked if he would support invoking the 25th Amendment to remove Trump from power should he fail a “mental-fitness test.” Kennedy responded that “there hasn’t been a president who is more sane,” or more “stable,” than Trump.
In a follow-up round of questioning by Rep. John Mannion (D-N.Y.) — who questioned whether Kennedy believes Trump is more sane than his own uncle, former President John F. Kennedy — Kennedy responded Trump is “very, very sane. I’d say he’s more sane than Uncle Joe — than Uncle Joe Biden.”
“Millions of Americans are wondering if this president is delusional and thinks he is Jesus Christ,” Takano pressed Kennedy — of a famously Catholic family — at one point, asking if Kennedy would support an assessment of the president’s mental faculties.
“Absolutely not,” Kennedy replied.
Trump has always behaved erratically, but amid his disastrous war of choice in Iran (and public threats of genocide), his visible mental and physical decline, as well as his clear lack of judgment and disregard for American and international law, a growing bipartisan coalition of political observers is questioning his fitness to serve out his term. The 25th Amendment, which has never been invoked against a sitting president, allows the vice president and the Cabinet to temporarily transfer power to the vice president if they determine he is unable to discharge his duties. The removal can become permanent with a subsequent two-thirds majority vote from Congress.
It’s unlikely that the Cabinet — stacked with MAGA sycophants — would agree to invoke the 25th Amendment to remove Trump from office. While longtime allies who’ve fallen out with the president, like Marjorie Taylor Greene and Alex Jones, have agitated for his removal, elected Republicans remain hesitant.
“No, I don’t have concerns about the president’s mental health,” Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) told reporters this week. Sen. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) told Huffpost that the proposal of “25th Amendment [legislation] is just ridiculous.”
But there’s nothing more ridiculous going on in government right now than the Trump administration’s efforts to pretend that they know what they are doing, and that nothing is wrong — in regard to the war in Iran, or anything else.
The disconnect was obvious during Kennedy’s testimony. At one point, the health secretary defended Trump’s Truth Social post threatening to wipe the Iranian civilization from the Earth as an example of Trump’s “nuanced” abilities as a dealmaker.
“If you look at that Truth Social Post post, I was pointing out the last line of it is ‘God bless the Iranian people,’” Kennedy said. “It was clear that he was sending a nuanced message. He was sending a message of brute force and violence to the mullahs to incentivize them to change, but also sending a message of love and compassion to the Iranian people. So you can look at it and say, ‘Oh, it’s insane that he’d make this kind of threat,’ but he’s a deal-maker. He’s a bargainer.”
No long-term deal was struck after Trump’s threat, and the second attempt at a temporary ceasefire is barely holding while the Strait of Hormuz remains effectively closed — as the Iranians claim that it is “fully open” but the Trump administration’s blockade remains in place.
But sure, Trump drives a hard bargain, one that will — in the best-case scenario — continue to batter the global economy for the remainder of the year. In any case, Trump teased on Friday that a deal to end the war with Iran is imminent, coming in the next “day or two.” Then again, he claims we’ve been just around the corner from the end of the war since the day he began it.
