Bombadil wrote:Senkaku wrote:Can't fire your veep. They have to resign, die, or be impeached. And no, it's not at all legal, we've basically witnessed a bloodless counter-coup against Trump by... well, it appears the entirety of the rest of the US government and military, or almost the entirety. Historians are going to go nuts about this in a few decades (if there are historians, or people, I guess).
It would be nice to have some clarity as to what exactly is going on given this is the highest office in the land.
Yes, clarity would be nice. Looking from the outside in, it seems like Pence has basically been informally deferred to by a lot of officials as the Acting President, though Pelosi's involvement is unclear-- her publicization of the convo w the Joint Chiefs about limiting Trump's nuclear strike options, and the fact that afaik they haven't refuted or even pushed back on it, leads me to believe she may be also be at least informally in control or advising on stuff. Trump appears to basically be under de facto house arrest and no one is listening to his orders if he's giving them. McConnell and other GOP leaders are probably also at least peripherally involved, I really don't know.
If I had to summarize my guess of the situation, it's that an informal collective gerontocracy with elements from both sides of the aisle has taken control of the executive branch with support from the Joint Chiefs and Pence as a figurehead.