‘Tell me the downside’: Spike pitches the 25th Amendment as the GOP’s path forward after midterm losses

Republicans just lost both chambers of Congress, and KIRO host Spike O’Neill has an idea for how they could recover before 2028: remove the president themselves.

“If the Republican Party steps in and says the president has lost the ability to govern, and we can see it through his statements on the stump, his actions, his decisions, I’m just saying, as a political strategy, I think it’s got merit,” Spike said on “The Jake and Spike Show” on KIRO Newsradio.

Co-host Jake Skorheim wasn’t sold.

“I find it hard to believe that the Republicans are going to invoke the 25th for the first time in history,” Jake countered.

Democrats won control of both the House and Senate in Tuesday’s midterm elections. The next morning, Vice President JD Vance blamed the losses on the war with Iran.

“The reason we lost is the war,” Vance wrote on X. “The president himself said so last night.” Trump called Vance’s post “largely true” but defended the war.

“I can tell you that as far as that war is concerned, I would have done nothing different,” Trump said.

Does the president become a martyr?

Spike started with a warning for Democrats.

“I think impeachment is the wrong way to go,” Spike claimed. “Because it makes a martyr of the president.”

Jake agreed, adding he expects Democrats to try it anyway.

Spike believes removing Trump under the 25th Amendment would accomplish what impeachment can’t. It would give Republicans an explanation for the last two years, including the war, and turn the focus to governing.

“It gives J.D. Vance two years in the job to show that he can do the job,” Spike highlighted. “Gives them a much stronger chance to win in 2028.”

Without that move, Spike argued, Trump would continue to dominate the political conversation during his final two years in office.

“If we talk about Trump for the next two years, then I think the Republicans won’t win the White House,” Spike claimed.

The 25th Amendment’s Section 4 lets the vice president and a majority of the Cabinet declare a president unable to serve. If the president disputes it, two-thirds of both the House and Senate must agree to keep him out. Presidents have voluntarily handed power to their vice presidents under the amendment for medical procedures, but Section 4 has never been used.

What comes next?

Jake pushed back on the idea that Trump would be uniquely out of control in his final two years.

“Just like Obama and Clinton,” Jake pointed out. “They did a lot of things. Obama said, ‘I got a pen and a phone.'”

“Well, they didn’t take secret files to their beach house in Florida,” Spike countered.

“Is that an earnest opinion? Is that sincere?” Jake asked. “I can’t tell.”

“I genuinely feel that this president has shown numerous times that it’s merited,” Spike said. “We’ve got a president breaking tradition, breaking norms, shattering norms, upside down, all over the place.”

‘Just be normal’

Jake said the real question is what Democrats do with their new power, and he thinks the smartest move is the least dramatic one.

“I think the thing that’s unexpected that Democrats could do is to just be normal for the next two years and to govern responsibly,” Jake said. “Leave him in his White House, and Democrats do their thing. I think the American people would probably be okay with there just being a little stagnation.”

He added investigations and impeachment would likely backfire.

“If they turn it into investigations and impeachments and all these things, I do think that that’s probably going to work against them,” Jake said.

Spike was not confident Democrats would follow the advice.

“My party snatches defeat from the jaws of victory time and time and time again,” Spike mused. “I dare to dream.”

Before the segment ended, Spike challenged Jake to name what could go wrong with his 25th Amendment plan.

“Tell me the downside,” Spike prompted.

“We only got 10 seconds,” Jake answered. “There’s a lot of downside.”

Listen to “The Jake and Spike Show” weekdays from noon to 3 p.m. on KIRO Newsradio 97.3 FM.