President Joe Biden appeared to have mental and physical difficulties, prompting widespread speculation and criticism in the media and among Democrats

Bethany Blankley
The Center Square

U.S. Rep. Chip Roy R-Texas, filed a resolution Friday calling for the 25th Amendment of the Constitution to be invoked to remove President Joe Biden from office after his performance at the presidential debate on Thursday night. Biden appeared to have mental and physical difficulties, prompting widespread speculation and criticism in the media and among Democrats.

The resolution calls on Vice President Kamala Harris “to convene and mobilize the principal officers of the executive departments of the Cabinet to activate Section 4 of the 25th Amendment to declare President Joseph Biden incapable of executing the duties of his office and to immediately exercise powers as Acting President.” It also states Biden “has repeatedly and publicly demonstrated his inability to discharge the powers and duties of the presidency, including, among others, the powers and duties of the Commander-In-Chief.”

Roy said, “Democrats have now known this for a long time,” referring to Biden’s mental and physical health. “They’ve been guilty of trying to hide it from the American people. They’ve been using him [Biden] as a puppet as a Manchurian candidate to drive their radical agenda. They’ve done that on purpose … now they saw the gig is up, that Trump could win, they were hoping they could keep the Manchurian candidate in place, they panicked. It was a controlled panic, let’s have an early debate, we’ll see how he performed. He didn’t perform. Now they have what they need to try to push him aside and end-run [Vice President] Kamala [Harris].”

Regardless of the Democrats’ problems, Roy said, “we have a constitutional duty to protect the Constitution. He’s incapable. We should force Democrats to own it and make a choice. Do you agree, do you believe he’s competent? Let’s make them choose.”

Congress proposed the 25th Amendment in 1965 after the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. All 50 states ratified it in 1967. It establishes procedures for replacing the president or vice president under certain circumstances. The first time it was invoked was in 1973 after Vice President Spiro Agnew resigned, according to the Congressional Research Service. It was again used in 1974 after President Richard Nixon resigned and when Vice President Gerald Ford, who became president, nominated Nelson Rockefeller as Vice President. It has not been used since.

Calls to invoke the 25th Amendment were made in February by multiple members of Congress after Special Counsel Robert Hur’s report cited examples of Biden’s mental lapses, describing him as an “elderly man with poor memory,” The Center Square reported.

Before that, and for three years, former White House physician for presidents Barack Obama and Donald Trump, U.S. Rep. Ronny Jackson, R-Texas, repeatedly questioned Biden’s mental and physical health and called for him to be removed under the 25th Amendment, The Center Square reported.

Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, agreed with Roy’s resolution, saying, “If the need to invoke the 25th Amendment wasn’t made abundantly clear last night, it never will be. This is dire. And exactly the kind of situation for which the 25th Amendment was written.”

U.S. Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, R-Florida, said if the Hur tapes were released, Biden’s cabinet would vote to remove him from office. She told Fox Business, “If we are able to hear that he is incompetent on those tapes,” she said the cabinet “would have to” vote to remove him. “I say that based on last night’s performance and the outcry from Democrats from various news outlets from the American people … calling for a new candidate or for him to step aside.”

At a campaign event in North Carolina on Friday, Biden said he wasn’t backing down. “I don’t walk as easy as I used to. I don’t speak as smoothly as I used to… I know how to tell the truth. I know right from wrong. I know how to do this job…I know like millions of Americans know; when you get knocked down you get back up.”

After his campaign blamed his poor performance on a cold, co-host of CBS Mornings Gayle King said, “When you have a cold there’s many things you can take for it. We didn’t know he had a cold until he stood up. A cold doesn’t force you to lose your train of thought. A cold doesn’t force you to just throw things out randomly that to many people made no sense.

“So how long do we continue to act like that we didn’t see what we just saw last night? I thought for many people, the word I keep hearing was, ‘it was very painful to watch.’”

This report was first published by The Center Square Washington.