00:01Professor Harrison, it strikes me when talking about the auto pin, there are really two issues.
00:08One is the mechanical use of an auto pin in lieu of...
00:13Whereas in President Biden's case, there was multiple issues of physical, mental confusion,
00:21him going in the wrong direction, him falling down, him misunderstanding an event
00:26or not being able to finish the sentence.
00:28That was never the case with President Trump.
00:30They were almost manufacturing instances in his case.
00:33A president who has not been pursuant to the 25th Amendment, determined not to be able to exercise the powers and duties of the president,
00:40is presumed to have capacity to do that.
00:43I say that not on the basis of any sort of...
00:46Other than practice, that's the way it's been for a couple of hundred years.
00:50But I think that is a reasonable inference from the fact that the Constitution does make a provision about what happens when the president's unable.
00:59And the 25th Amendment then provides a process to determine by which the president's unable.
01:04I will say the 25th Amendment, it's a modern contrivance, but it still is consistent with American constitutional tradition,
01:13which it assumes that officers of the United States will act virtuously and morally.
01:19And the idea that members of the cabinet would go to the length of avoiding the Oval Office so as to abdicate their responsibility to verify the appropriateness of the president's acuity
01:31or the ability to authenticate actions taken by the president.
01:35If that's not a constitutional scandal, honestly, I don't know what would constitute such.
01:41I think that this is a situation in which Congress's power is pretty limited because the Constitution by design put a somewhat vague
01:59but nevertheless meaningful concept, which is ability on the part of the president's act in the hands of a political process.
02:06Yes, and good faith, and I don't think, obviously, we don't have that here.
