First GOP Lawmaker Calls for Invoking 25th Amendment to Remove Donald Trump From Office

The first GOP lawmaker has come forward to call for invoking the 25th Amendment and removing President Donald Trump from office. According to The Hill, Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.) spoke out on Thursday following the harrowing riot at the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday. A mob of Trump supporters, who had been protesting the results of the presidential election, stormed the building and engaged in standoffs with Capitol police.

In a video message shared to Twitter, Kinzinger — a regular critic of Trump who considers himself a centrist Republican — said, "Here's the truth. The president caused this. The president is unfit and the president is unwell. And the president now must relinquish control of the executive branch voluntarily or involuntarily." He then explained that use of the 25th Amendment is not unprecedented, as it has been used to pass power temporarily to the vice president — in times such as when a president has to undergo a medical procedure that requires anesthesia — "because even for that moment to have the captain of the ship absent could cause a major catastrophe."

"All indications are that the president has become unmoored, not just from his duty, nor even his oath, but from reality itself," Kinzinger went on to say. "It's for this reason that I call for the vice president and members of the Cabinet to ensure the next few weeks are safe for the American people and that we have a sane captain of the ship." The GOP leader clarified that he was calling for the 25th Amendment to be invoked because he believes that Trump "abdicated his duty" to protect the citizens present in the Capitol at the time his supporters began their rampage.

Kinzinger also stated that he believes Trump's unsubstantiated claims of voter fraud "inflamed passions." Finally, Kinzinger called out Trump's subsequent statement to the violent mob, which the Illinois representative saw as a "wink and a nod" to the mob of Trump supporters from their president. "Until the president is able to himself," Kinzinger said. "It's time to invoke the 25th Amendment and to end this nightmare."

While many Democratic lawmakers have been calling for the 25th Amendment to be invoked against Trump, Kinzinger is the fist member of the GOP to call for it. He spoke to MSNBC and shared what motivated him to publicly call for this, stating that it was seeing other GOP leaders making baseless claims that the rioters were left-wing instigators, rather than the Trump supporters who were captured on camera. "I think it's obvious that there are people that their own political survival demands that they create a different narrative to what happened yesterday," he said, "and creating a different narrative is going to lead to something like this happening again, or maybe worse."