Nancy Pelosi is almost, sort of, close to ready to talk about the 25th Amendment

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Impact

There's something depressingly perfect about the fact that the Democrats are so worried about President Trump's seemingly deteriorating mental state, that they're finally going to do something about it: propose the creation of select commission to think very hard about the matter.

That, evidently, is what House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was referring to Thursday, when she cryptically hinted that she'd be talking about the 25th Amendment — the one which describes when and how a president can be stripped of their power — the following day. Per a media advisory released shortly after Pelosi's Thursday press conference, she and Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) plan to introduce a bill in Congress to establish a "commission on presidential capacity to discharge the powers and duties of office."

The commission, the advisory explained, would serve as the "body and process called for in the 25th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution to help ensure effective and uninterrupted leadership in the highest office in the executive branch of government."

Shortly after Pelosi's press conference, the president launched a frantic Twitter campaign about her comments, retweeting comments from Rep. Mark Green (R-Tenn.) claiming Pelosi might "stage a coup" by "weaponizing the 25th Amendment."

@realdonaldtrump

Shortly thereafter, Trump paradoxically retweeted journalist Andrew Feinberg's active contradiction of Green's alarmist fear-mongering, which is perhaps the single least erratic thing the president has done on Twitter in days.

@realdonaldtrump

Does he ... not know what Feinberg is saying here? Is he playing both sides? Who do you think is going to have to strap on layers of PPE to wade into the Oval Office hot zone and tell him what's going on here?

For her part, Pelosi hasn't elaborated on the proposed legislation — which, by the minimal indications so far, seems like the perfect sort of incrementalism the Democrats have relied upon (and been absolutely failed by) in their previous skirmishes with a president who absolutely could not care less about norms or constraints or even, in some cases, laws. A proposal to eventually create committee to study the possible invocation of the 25th Amendment? Slow down there, Dems, let's not go wild here!

To her credit, however, Pelosi has begun to speak a little more candidly about the president's mental state since his return to the White House from Walter Reed hospital and subsequent prescription of potentially psychotropic steroids, telling Bloomberg TV that "the president is, shall we say, in an altered state right now."

“I don’t know how to answer for that behavior," she added.

Except, it seems, perhaps she does. We'll have to see Friday.