Friends,
We live in perilous times, and this is compounded by a narcissist in the White House. Surely his mental acuity is declining rapidly. He tells lies and made-up stories, and this is only going to get worse. Will the Republican party dare to tell him, as happened to Nixon, time is up?
Kagiso, Max
- CounterPunch.org - https://www.counterpunch.org -
No Guardrails for Trump’s Dark Triad
By Melvin Goodman on April
17, 2026
Photograph by Nathaniel St. Clair
Donald Trump’s instability and insanity have finally provoked
discussion of two possible Constitutional guardrails that would allow for his
removal from power: the impeachment power and the 25th Amendment. On a
theoretical basis, either guardrail could prove capable of addressing the terrible—even
apocalyptic—problem that the nation—and the world—currently face. But on
a practical level, neither tool is likely to succeed.
Trump could be the poster child for the Dark Triad, which refers
to a cluster of three overlapping yet distinct personality traits linked to
manipulative, self-centered, and socially harmful behavior. The triad
refers to narcissism, psychopathy, and Machiavellianism, which help to explain
toxic behavior in personal and professional settings. The symptoms associated
with these traits include moral hypocrisy, arrogance, poor impulse control, a
lack of empathy, and a lack of accountability. Sadly, unlike his first
term, Trump has surrounded himself with loyalists who have no interest in
limiting or countering these behaviors.
The more progressive members of the Democratic Party, such as
Representatives Jamie Raskin of MD and Al Green of TX, are leading the charge
for impeachment or the invocation of the 25th Amendment. Raskin even
wrote the White House physician to demand a “comprehensive cognitive
assessment” of the president, arguing that “we have indisputably entered the
realm of profound medical difficulty and concern.” Trump’s recent remarks
on Iran (“a whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back
again”) and the Pope (“Leo should get his act together as Pope…and focus on
being a Great Pope, not a Politician”) have even led Trump’s former allies—such
as Tucker Carlson and Marjorie Taylor Greene—to raise alarms regarding the
president’s fitness to serve as commander in chief.
The 25th Amendment will go nowhere. It was ratified in 1967
after the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, but the congressional
debates at that time indicated that the amendment was concerned primarily with
the temporary incapacitation of a president, and not the removal of a president
because of his dangerous mental state. In any event, the requirements for
removal, even temporary removal, present a very high bar for success. The
Vice President and a majority of the Cabinet or “such other body as Congress
may by law provide” would be needed for the vice president to “assume the power
and duties of the office as Acting President.” This is highly unlikely.
Successful constitutional impeachment is an even more difficult
process where the House of Representatives impeaches by simple majority, but
the Senate tries the case, requiring a two-thirds majority to convict and
remove the president. The House has the sole power to impeach; the Senate
has the sole power to convict. The Republican-led bodies and the pathetic
fealty of the Republican members ensure that Trump could possibly be impeached,
but certainly never convicted. There have been four impeachment of
presidents (Andrew Johnson, Bill Clinton, and Donald Trump twice), but all
received acquittals from the Senate. Richard Nixon resigned in 1974 to
avoid an impeachment that probably would have led to conviction.
Ironically, the Constitution has a third process to prevent
someone from serving as a president, which would be the 14th Amendment.
Under the 14th Amendment, any person who has engaged in insurrection or
rebellion against the United States is disqualified from holding office.
In view of Trump’s role in the January 6th insurrection, the legal mechanism of
the 14th Amendment should have blocked Trump from running—let alone winning—in
2024.
It is time for the minority members of the Congress to act because
the nation and its voters must confront the gravity of the situation that finds
an unstable president holding the codes to the nuclear arsenal. Gaining
the majority in the House and/or Senate would give Democrats the political
leverage to slow down Trump’s destruction of foreign and domestic policies, but
there is still time for the president to further damage U.S. credibility and
influence at home and abroad. The mainstream media doesn’t appear to
recognize the desperate times that we are facing as a nation, but the public
seems to have recognize it. The public was ahead of the media in
protesting the Vietnam War 60 years ago.
That our president and our secretary of defense [sic] claim that the war
they have started is God’s war, should be setting off sirens blaring that
“attention must be paid.”
URL to article: https://www.counterpunch.org/2026/04/17/no-guardrails-for-trumps-dark-triad/
Donations can be sent to Max Obuszewski, Baltimore
Nonviolence Center, 431 Notre Dame Lane, Apt. 206, Baltimore, MD 21212.
Ph: 410-323-1607; Email: mobuszewski2001 [at] comcast.net.
Go to http://baltimorenonviolencecenter.blogspot.com/
"The master class has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles. The master class has had all to gain and nothing to lose, while the subject class has had nothing to gain and everything to lose--especially their lives." Eugene Victor Debs
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