Nobel winner warns Trump planning 'truly awful' act — and demands his immediate removal
A Nobel Prize-winner has called for the 25th Amendment to be invoked against Donald Trump following a series of failures.
Paul Krugman suggested Trump knows the war in Iran is now a lost cause, but that the president would not pull out of the conflict. Speaking in a post published to his Substack, Krugman suggested the only way out may be to invoke the 25th Amendment. That would force Trump from office and pass presidential powers and duties to Vice President JD Vance.
Krugman said, "This is really bad. It’s hard to see what happens in 48 hours. It’s clear that Trump, for all his pretense of, 'I’m always winning,' is aware of how completely he screwed things up, that he’s aware that he has basically led America into an epic strategic defeat.
"I don’t think he cares about that from the point of view of America, but he is realizing what this has done to him — that he will probably quite rapidly lose his grip on U.S. politics, and certainly to the extent that he cares about his legacy, it’s not going to be his wonderful ballroom.
"It’s going to be that he’s the man who single-handedly led America to one of its greatest defeats ever. But now what? It would be one thing if he just kind of slunk away into the night, which is what we would have hoped would happen, but instead it sounds like he’s unable to accept it and that he is going to try and do something truly awful in an attempt to somehow redeem himself and the situation.
"If we had a functioning democracy, this would be 25th Amendment time. This guy should not have any authority at all. Finger on the button, although I don’t think we’re talking about nukes, but he shouldn’t have any authority on matters of state violence when this is the kind of mood he’s in.
"Just in general, although religiosity is often expected of American leaders, saying glory be to God before you unleash violence, that is not what used to be the American way."
Krugman went on to warn against Trump's current tone and his lackluster speeches. "On Wednesday, Trump gave a speech, which was... pretty depressing. He was low energy, listless, and seemed to be disconnected from reality, insisting that everything is going great in this war and everything is going great across the board.
"Anyway, I’m scared. I wonder very much what the next few days will bring because this is looking like basically a president who is losing it and unfortunately losing it in a way that can really make the world a much worse place very fast."