Trump needs to go. If we can’t use the 25th amendment, I have another idea | Arwa Mahdawi

For the past few months, I have been waging a cold war with a neighbour who constantly puts out their rubbish on the wrong day. And by “cold war” I mean complaining incessantly to my longsuffering wife while the neighbour goes about their business blissfully unaware that we are mortal enemies. But enough is enough. Last week I decided to end this situation via a strongly worded letter. “Tuesday will be Explosions Day in your house, neighbour!” I wrote. “There will be nothing like it!!! Put out your Fuckin’ Rubbish properly, you crazy bastards, or you’ll be living in Hell – JUST WATCH! Praise be to Allah.”

I am sorry to drag Allah into this obviously imaginary exchange, but I’m just channelling the US president. I’m sure you’ve already seen Donald Trump’s profanity-laden Easter Sunday warning to Iran, where he threatened to carry out the mass bombing of civilian infrastructure – but if you haven’t, then go read it and weep. The days where Trump’s outbursts were amusing (remember “covfefe”?) are long gone. There is nothing funny about endless stream-of-consciousness screeds from a seemingly unwell man who is not just destroying the US, but dragging the whole world down with it. If a civilian acted like the president routinely does, they’d find themselves fired or institutionalised very quickly.

Many people are asking what exactly it would take to get Trump fired from the most powerful job in the US. Various politicians have called for the 25th amendment to be invoked, which is one route for getting rid of an unfit president. Following Trump’s “crazy bastards” social media post, Senator Chris Murphy wrote on X: “If I were in Trump’s cabinet, I would spend Easter calling constitutional lawyers about the 25th amendment. This is completely, utterly unhinged. He’s already killed thousands. He’s going to kill thousands more.”

Let’s be honest: at this rate Trump could wipe out half of the Middle East and I’m not sure anyone in his orbit would lift a finger to try to get him removed. Hell, they’d probably be cheering on the slaughter and crying happy tears at the idea that the end times are nigh. Even if they weren’t all drinking the Trump Kool-Aid, the US system makes it incredibly difficult to remove a president. Ultimately, there are only two ways Trump is leaving office before the end of his term. The first is in a casket. The second is if his shenanigans end up losing his billionaire pals money. Which seems unlikely, considering all the well-timed stock market trades that seem to be going on amid the Iran war.

Anyway, I hope all the new graduates navigating a grim job market are paying attention to this. If you want a career path that allows unparalleled job stability, no matter how you badly you behave, US politics is the way to go. It’s not just difficult to get rid of a president; the system makes it almost impossible to beat an incumbent congressperson or senator. Which means that once someone gets into power, they often stay in power for far longer than is good for anyone. In 2024, for example, a reporter discovered that a Republican congresswoman from Texas, who hadn’t cast a vote for months, was in an assisted living facility dealing with “dementia issues”. The late Democratic senator Dianne Feinstein, meanwhile, died in office in 2023, at the age of 90. By the end she had serious health issues that caused her to miss nearly 100 votes, and questions were swirling about her mental acuity. Republican senator Mitch McConnell, 84, has suffered a number of strange “freezing” incidents in public but has decided to leave with his dignity somewhat intact and retire this year. And I obviously don’t need to tell you about Joe Biden.

But look, enough hand-wringing. I think I have a way out of this mess. Since we can’t rely on the usual checks and balances to get Trump out of office, we have to get creative. The Trump administration loves technology; why not convince the dear leader he can make history by spending his days golfing while his work is done by the world’s first AI president? Sure, AI is problematic, but if we’re going from zero intelligence to artificial intelligence, that’s an upgrade, right? And if AI-Trump starts acting up, we can always try turning it off and then turning it on again. Shame you can’t do that for democracy.