Donald Trump is no stranger to outrage. But his latest threat to destroy "a whole civilisation" in Iran, posted to Truth Social on Tuesday morning, crossed a new threshold, prompting rare dissent from within his own camp.
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The backlash was immediate. Over 70 Democratic lawmakers, questioning his mental fitness, have called for the president's removal, with some citing the 25th Amendment – which allows the vice president and the cabinet to declare a president is no longer able to perform the job – and others filing articles of impeachment. More striking were reactions from prominent conservative voices.
Former Georgia representative Marjorie Taylor Greene – once one of Trump's most outspoken supporters – posted on X: "25TH AMENDMENT!!! Not a single bomb has dropped on America. We cannot kill an entire civilisation. This is evil and madness." Tucker Carlson, long a reliable champion of the president, accused him of threatening "a war crime, a moral crime".
Even among Trump’s strongest allies, signs of unease have begun to emerge. Trisha Hope, a January 6 activist and former diehard supporter who has campaigned for those convicted over the Capitol attack, broke ranks, writing on X that she felt a “deep sadness” and that “it is not MAGA that has changed, it is Trump… he has failed the mission and it is time he leave the office”.
Trump later announced a two-week ceasefire, but the political storm shows no sign of abating.
A constitutional mechanism built for incapacity
Ratified in 1967 in the wake of president John F. Kennedy's assassination, the 25th Amendment established a clear line of presidential succession and, in its Section 4, a process to remove a president deemed unable to discharge his duties.
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The mechanism is anything but simple, explains Mario Del Pero, a professor of US politics at Sciences Po Paris. The vice president and a majority of the cabinet must first send a written declaration to both chambers of Congress stating that the president cannot fulfil his role. The vice president would then immediately assume presidential powers. Should the president contest that decision – which Trump almost certainly would – the matter returns to Congress, where a two-thirds majority in both the House and the Senate would be required to sustain the removal.
"Section 4 of the 25th Amendment has never been invoked," Del Pero told FRANCE 24. "As a broader political and public conversation, like the one we are seeing today or in January 2021 following the 6th, I don't think it has any precedent."
A cabinet of loyalists, a base that holds
The closest the amendment came to being invoked was in the final days of Trump's first term, in the immediate aftermath of January 6, 2021. It was not. The obstacles today are, if anything, greater.
Trump's current cabinet is, as Del Pero put it, "a cabinet of ultra-loyalists and zealots". Vice President JD Vance, who would be the primary actor in any invocation of Section 4, was in Budapest on Tuesday, calling Trump by phone so the president could address a political rally in support of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban. No cabinet member has publicly broken with the president over the Iran rhetoric.
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Denis Lacorne, an emeritus political scientist who has followed US presidents since the 1960s, is equally sceptical. "It never works unless the president is in a coma," he added. "There are so many restrictions. In reality, it is useless."
Even within MAGA, Lacorne argues, the cracks remain superficial. The figures who have spoken out carry real influence as pundits and public figures, but they don’t represent a broader collapse of the base. "The average MAGA voter follows Trump, not Tucker Carlson," Del Pero added.
Unprecedented language, familiar limits
If the political mechanisms have clear limits, the rhetoric that triggered them is without precedent in US history. Writing in The Atlantic, historian Barbara A. Kelly notes that all previous US presidents, however flawed in private, sought to appear measured and statesmanlike when addressing the nation about war.
Richard Nixon's profanity-laced tirades were confined to taped conversations with staff. Even during the 1979 Iran hostage crisis, Jimmy Carter, a former naval officer, chose patient diplomacy over public inflammatory speech, believing aggressive talk would endanger the 66 Americans held in Tehran. Trump's Easter Sunday post, calling Iranian leaders "crazy bastards" and warning they would be "living in Hell", stood, as Kelly writes, in stark contrast with "even his most profane predecessors".
Courts, midterms and the long game
With impeachment equally out of reach while Republicans control both chambers, and the 25th Amendment politically inoperable, the most effective checks on Trump's power have come from an unexpected direction: the courts. Federal judges have blocked multiple executive orders on constitutional grounds. Even the Supreme Court, broadly sympathetic to the administration's agenda, has blocked some key initiatives, including on tariffs, in a major blow to the president.
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A Democratic victory in the November 2026 midterms could shift the calculus further. Control of the House would hand Democrats the chairmanship of key committees with subpoena power, opening the door to investigations into the Trump family's business dealings, its cryptocurrency ventures and the Gulf states' financial entanglements with the administration. "If major scandals explode," Del Pero said, "there could be an opening for an impeachment. But that's in the distant future."
For now, Trump's political survival rests on one variable: the loyalty of the MAGA base and his unique ability to hold it together. "Trump somehow makes MAGA," Del Pero said. "He absorbs even radical U-turns in his policy. Remove Trump and those divisions within MAGA will explode. But for the moment, Trump controls MAGA."
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