Former Bush aide issues startling warning to GOP: 'It's time to panic'
For the Republican Party, it’s time to panic. That’s what a former top aide to President George W. Bush wrote in the Washington Post Friday.
"Trump’s quote, 'fundamental unfitness' to serve as president could do permanent damage to the country," Michael Gerson, who was the director of speechwriting in the 43rd president's White House said.
He wrote specifically about the president’s Twitter feud with Senator Bob Corker, in which he called the Tennessee Republican “Liddle Bob Corker” and blamed him for the Iran nuclear deal and said Corker didn’t have the guts to run for re-election.
Gerson also went after Speaker of the House Paul Ryan, accusing him of “bland complacency.”
Now there’s been some talk in DC about a specific part of the 25th Amendment that says a majority of the cabinet and the Vice President can come together to remove Trump from office.
The provision would allow for a written declaration that the president is “unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office," and Gerson suggests the time has come.
But the real problem has always been Trump’s fundamental unfitness for high office. It is not Trump’s indiscipline and lack of leadership, which make carrying a legislative agenda forward nearly impossible. It is not his vulgarity and smallness, which have been the equivalent of spray-painting graffiti on the Washington Monument. It is not his nearly complete ignorance of policy and history, which condemns him to live in the eternal present of his own immediate desires.
No, Corker has given public permission to raise the most serious questions: Is Trump psychologically and morally equipped to be president? And could his unfitness cause permanent damage to the country?
It is no longer possible to safely ignore the leaked cries for help coming from within the administration. They reveal a president raging against enemies, obsessed by slights, deeply uninformed and incurious, unable to focus, and subject to destructive whims.
"The time for whispered criticisms and quiet snickering is over. The time for panic and decision is upon us," Gerson added.
