Is the stage Being Set To Invoke the 25th Amendment?

White House allies reported are concerned that Trump is "unstable"

A piece in the Washington Post authored Robert Costa, Philip Rucker and Ashley Parker had a number of pundits speculating whether or not part of the game plan of GOP Senator Bob Corker - and perhaps even Secretary of State Rex Tillerson - was to help set the stage for the presidential cabinet to invoke the 25th Amendment and either remove Der  Trumpenführer or to pressure him into resigning.  While I do not relish the thought of a religious extremists like Mike Pence holding the office of the presidency, on the other hand, Pence is not a complete madman like Trump. Then, of course, there is always the hope that special prosecutor Robert Mueller will ensnare Pence in the Russiagate investigation.  But getting back to Der  Trumpenführer, anyone sane and with any analytical ability should have known long before November 8, 2016, that Trump was not right mentally.  Many have seemingly correctly called him a malignant narcissist and the months since he moved into the White House appear to have only confirmed his unfitness for office (and I mean any office). Now, perhaps some are looking past their own racism and xenophobia which Trump pandered to shameless may be opening their eyes.  More importantly, if we are lucky, Congressional Republicans, especially those in the Senate are belatedly realizing that Trump needs to go whether voluntarily or by forced removal under the 25th Amendment if articles of impeachment cannot clear the much more rabidly insane Republican caucus in the House of Representatives.  Here are excerpts on the out of control situation in the White House:

Frustrated by his Cabinet and angry that he has not received enough credit for his handling of three successive hurricanes, President Trump is now lashing out, rupturing alliances and imperiling his legislative agenda, numerous White House officials and outside advisers said Monday.

In a matter of days, Trump has torched bridges all around him, nearly imploded an informal deal with Democrats to protect young undocumented immigrants brought to the country as children, and plunged himself into the culture wars on issues ranging from birth control to the national anthem.

n doing so, Trump is laboring to solidify his standing with his populist base and return to the comforts of his campaign — especially after the embarrassing defeat of Sen. Luther Strange in last month’s Alabama GOP special election, despite the president’s trip there to campaign with the senator.

Sen. Bob Corker’s brutal assessment of Trump’s fitness for office — warning that the president’s reckless behavior could launch the nation “on the path to World War III” — also hit like a thunderclap inside the White House, where aides feared possible ripple effects among other Republicans on Capitol Hill. . . . few GOP leaders came to the president’s defense Monday — though few sided openly with Corker, either. The most vocal Trump defender was the one under the president’s direction, Vice President Pence.

Trump in recent days has shown flashes of fury and left his aides, including White House chief of staff John F. Kelly, scrambling to manage his outbursts.

One Trump confidant likened the president to a whistling teapot, saying that when he does not blow off steam, he can turn into a pressure cooker and explode. “I think we are in pressure cooker territory,” said this person, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to talk candidly.

This portrait of the president increasingly isolated in the capital city is based on interviews with 18 White House officials, outside advisers and other Trump associates.

But Pence’s words did little to reassure some Trump allies, who fear that the president’s feud with Corker could cause more trouble for the administration and further unravel threadbare relationships on Capitol Hill. . . . . One Trump loyalist — noting that Corker has many more friends in the Senate than Trump does — said the rift could dash chances for a tax law overhaul or other meaningful legislation. “His presidency could be doomed,” said this person, who spoke on the condition of anonymity so as not to alienate the president or his staff.

Trump is facing political head winds, including from his base. The Alabama Senate primary last month, in which a far-right challenger defeated a more establishment Republican whom the president had endorsed, served as a warning flare for Trump’s team, highlighting the risk he could run if he alienates the core supporters who helped lift him to electoral victory.

“Donald Trump got elected with minority support from the American electorate, and most of his efforts thus far are focused on energizing and solidifying the 40 percent of Americans who were with him, primarily by attacking the 60 percent who were not,” Republican pollster Whit Ayres said. “That is great for his supporters, but it makes it very difficult to accomplish anything in a democracy.”

Trump’s political calculus is complicated by Bannon’s return to his previous role at the helm of Breitbart. Now working to forward a nationalist agenda from outside the confines of the administration, Bannon has vowed war against any Republican lawmakers he believes are insufficiently conservative . . .

Even the Trump family has become a flash point. On Monday, the president’s first and third wives — Ivana and Melania, respectively — engaged in a public spat.

Yet another column in the Post also notes Trump's temper tantrums and seeming mental instability.  Here are excerpts:

The past week definitively revealed the mirage of a maturing president. The first thing that set off the president was the spectacle of Secretary of State Rex Tillerson trying to swat down well-sourced stories that he had called Trump a “f***ing moron.” Alas, Dexter Filkins’s New Yorker profile of Tillersonjust made both the secretary of state and the president look worse.

Then this weekend the floodgates opened after the president went after Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) on Twitter. Which led to this: It's a shame the White House has become an adult day care center. Someone obviously missed their shift this morning. The aftershocks of Corker’s claim about the vast majority of other Republicans feeling the way he did probably will be felt for as long as reporters can ask other members of Congress. But it also triggered a raft of stories about how other key political actors have had a similar reaction to the president.

After nearly nine months of the Trump administration, many of America’s closest allies have concluded that a hoped-for “learning curve” they thought would make President Trump a reliable partner is not going to happen.

“The idea that he would inform himself, and things would change, that is no longer operative,” said a top diplomat here.

And then there’s Trump’s White House staff, as Politico’s Josh Dawsey reports:

Interviews with ten current and former administration officials, advisers, longtime business associates and others close to Trump describe a process where they try to install guardrails for a president who goes on gut feeling – and many days are spent managing the president, just as Corker said.

“You either had to just convince him something better was his idea or ignore what he said to do and hoped he forgot about it the next day,” said Barbara Res, a former executive in the Trump Organization. . . . . Then, staffers would step in to avert a rash decision by calming him down.

Let me stress that each of the excerpted stories above broke in the past 48 hours. The pace is quickening.

What’s next? Ordinary toddlers eventually tire out after throwing a tantrum. But this is when the analogy breaks down. Full disclosure: Trump is not really a toddler, but an overindulged plutocrat who has never had to cope with political failure. With each negative shock or story he faces, his behavior worsens, and that just leads to a new cycle of negative press and disaffected GOP officials. The political effects of this is to weaken his historically weak presidency, making it harder for him to do anything that would counteract this trend. This doom loop means that his behavior is only going to get worse.

That is great for my Twitter thread. It is awful for America.