Thanks to John Roberts & Co., it’s quite literally the case that JD Vance has the legal power to make himself president, and nobody could do anything about it

Following up on my cheery disquisitions from this morning, the following statements about the current state of American constitutional law are absolutely unimpeachable:

(1) Under the 25th amendment, if JD Vance gets half of the cabinet to sign a letter declaring that Donald Trump is unable to carry out the duties of the presidency, JD Vance becomes Acting President — which for all practical purposes is exactly the same thing as being POTUS — as soon as that letter is transmitted to Congress. Now it’s true that Congress could assemble for the purpose, and by vote restore Trump as president, but before that could happen we get to . . .

(2) Under the holding in Trump v. United States, it simply can’t be disputed that the president’s core powers include commanding the military, and issuing pardons. These are in no way areas of “shared responsibility” with Congress, where the president’s immunity from criminal prosecution, both while he’s president and afterwards, is “merely” presumptive: immunity here is absolute.

Again, neither (1) or (2) is something that can be disputed: it’s as black letter as American law can possibly be.

It follows that, if JD Vance should through a combination of bribery and extortion, induce half the cabinet to sign the requisite letter, Vance would instantly become POTUS. He could then order the military or the Secret Service to assassinate Trump, after having — remember, he’s already president — pardoned both the cabinet, himself, and anyone else involved in this PERFECTLY LEGAL COUP from any prosecution for murder, conspiracy, and sedition, as well as for offering and accepting anything and everything in the way of bribes for having committed murder, sedition, etc.

I can’t emphasize strongly enough that, thanks to the Unspeakable Wisdom of John Roberts and the Roger Taney Five (see their latest release on Asylum Records), it’s simply not subject to any dispute that this is the legal situation in the United States of America at the moment. It’s no more contestable than the claim that California gets two senators, or that the president has to be at least 35. In other words, it’s The Law to the maximum extent that that phrase can mean anything at all.

The only admissible response to this is that well that may be the formal legal situation — there’s in fact no “may” about it, it simply is — but something like this would never happen because [tk].