What happens if the president can't continue to run?
The Dershow
Alan Dershowitz | Kast Media
4.4 • 1.9K Ratings
🗓️ 2 October 2020
⏱️ 20 minutes
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Summary
President Trump's Covid-19 diagnosis raises many questions about what happens in the event he becomes incapacitated. The 25th Amendment provides for what happens in the event of an incapacitated president, but what happens if there is an incapacitated candidate?
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The president |
| 0:05.0 | he becomes incapacitated while serving as president or and |
| 0:10.0 | while serving as the Republican candidate for president. |
| 0:13.6 | The Constitution deals with the first, 25th Amendment. |
| 0:16.2 | If he's incapacitated as president, we know what happens. |
| 0:19.0 | There is no constitutional provision dealing what happens with a candidate. |
| 0:25.0 | When a candidate becomes incapacitated, |
| 0:28.0 | you'll hear what the law is and what the rules are on the dirt show. |
| 0:36.0 | We all wish the president a full and quick recovery from his recent diagnosis with COVID and that of his wife, but we have to be prepared for every possible |
| 0:49.0 | eventuality. |
| 0:50.9 | And I'm here to tell you on the Dershore show this morning that the Constitution does not provide all the answers. |
| 0:59.0 | This is a potential event not covered by the United States Constitution. |
| 1:06.4 | The President is now serving in two capacities, one of which is covered by the Constitution. |
| 1:11.2 | He is the President of the United States and will serve as |
| 1:14.9 | President to the United States until January 20th, unless he would have become |
| 1:19.7 | incapacitated. If that were to occur, then his presidential duties would be |
| 1:26.4 | completely covered by the very definitive 25th Amendment, which was enacted only in recent decades to cover precisely a situation like |
| 1:38.1 | this if it occurred in the middle of a president's term. If a president becomes incapacitated and we have to go through all the God-for-bids |
| 1:46.4 | scenarios here to see what the potential outcomes are. If the president, for example, were to become seriously ill with COVID and have to go into a respirator, which requires that he be unconscious, he would be incapacitated for that period of time and the 25th |
| 2:06.6 | amendment would kick in. We have a dear and close friend of our family who was a |
| 2:11.9 | young man in his 40s, who had to go on a respirator for 28 days, |
| 2:17.0 | and he was in a coma for 28 days. |
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