Former President Donald Trump joined Ben Shapiro’s podcast Tuesday and suggested that the 25th Amendment should be invoked to remove both President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris.
“I think they should do a double 25th amendment,” Trump said on the podcast, The Ben Shapiro Show. “Just get them both out. Who’s third in line? Because it’s just terrible.”
The 25th Amendment addresses issues related to presidential succession and disability. It clarifies that the vice president becomes president if the president dies, resigns or is removed following an impeachment. The transfer of presidential authority has been passed to the vice president in the past when necessary due to a medical procedure.
Former President Donald Trump listens to a question from the audience during a campaign event at the Crown Center Arena on October 4, 2024, in Fayetteville, North Carolina. American commentator Ben Shapiro is seen on set during a taping of “Candace” on March 17, 2021, in Nashville.
Photo by Win McNamee/Jason Kempin/Getty Images
In September, Trump called for “modifying” the 25th Amendment to allow for the removal of a vice president who “lies or engages in a conspiracy to cover up the incapacity of the president.”
In answering Trump’s question about who the third in line would be if Biden and Harris were both ousted, Shapiro informed the Republican presidential nominee the duties would fall to Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson.
Trump called Biden and Harris’ time in the White House “the worst administration ever.”
“They both don’t know what the hell they’re doing,” Trump said.
The Republican nominee, however, noted that his friends in the White House told him that Biden is “angry,” that Harris is just “trying to distance herself.”
Even still, the former president said Harris is “equally incompetent” as Biden.
This follows suit to what Trump told a Georgia rally two weeks ago that Harris has “bigger cognitive problems” than the president.
The comment in Georgia came a little more than an hour into the rally, after Trump discussed what he called Biden’s cognitive decline and the threat he perceived it put the U.S. in with other leaders, like China’s Xi Jinping, “at the top of their game”.
“All over the world they’re laughing at us,” Trump said. “You know what they’re really laughing at? Kamala. They can’t believe that she’s really going to be president. They can’t believe. You talk about cognitive problems? She has bigger cognitive problems than he has in my opinion.”
Trump, 78, had attacked his previous opponent, Biden, 81, for being too old for office. At one point he labeled Biden as a “bad 81-year-old.” At the beginning of the year, many polls also showed voters thought Biden was too old to run in 2024.
Hours after Biden withdrew his candidacy in the 2024 election, Democrats began to question Trump’s age.
As the narrative has flipped, a Morning Consult survey of around 2,200 registered voters showed that now Trump is facing off against the 59-year-old Harris, fewer voters believe Trump is in “good health”.
Psychiatrist Richard Friedman wrote in The Atlantic earlier this month that Trump is showing signs of cognitive decline.
Republican National Committee co-chair Lara Trump, however, told NBC News her father-in-law is “joking around,” when he calls Harris mentally incompetent.
The majority of Trump’s 25-minute talk with Shapiro was focused on hurricane relief. He called Harris out for that, saying “the woman doesn’t know what she’s doing.”
Millions of Florida residents have been urged to get out of the area before Hurricane Milton hits on Wednesday, with a huge swathe of the state subject to evacuation orders. The state is still reeling from Hurricane Helene’s deadly destruction just two weeks ago.
“I left Florida last night and it was starting to get nasty already,” Trump said. “This is going to be a big one.”
