As the unfathomable idiocy of the Russian collusion fades into Special Counsel Mueller’s trying to protect his protégé and successor, James Comey, from being exposed for his misconduct toward both presidential candidates, and to keep FBI witnesses out of congressional hearings, the Never Trumpers have started to lose control of the Trump-is-evil narrative. They have fallen back to a redefinition in use of the 25th Amendment to make incapacity to govern synonymous with disagreement with the liberal political class that has ruled America since the Reagan era and whose failures and pretensions caused the aggrieved people to carry Donald Trump to the leadership of the Republicans and on to the White House. The criminalization of policy differences almost shattered the division of powers and the efficacy of the federal system during the Watergate affair and after, in the Iran-Contra and Whitewater episodes. Now, the successors to those assaults on the presidency are trying to take a precautious device used up to now only during presidential rectal examinations under sedation, to adapt it as a method of sidelining Trump in favor of his vice president.

Even some benign and reasonable people who seek to be fair, and do give the president a chance, are inconsolably shocked by the president’s outbursts of unseemly spontaneity, and have concluded that he cannot succeed as president. Recourse to the 25th Amendment would not remove Trump: It would be like the madness of King George III, and he would be writing Congress every month demanding to have the full exercise of the presidency back. The whole concept, spiked up by Tennessee senator Bob Corker’s outrageous reflections on Trump’s mental stability, is touted now by The New Yorker magazine, still feverish with Obama deprivation. It is too preposterous to bear thinking about it further.