So we all heard the stunning news on Friday morning around 1 a.m. that President Trump and

First Lady Melania Trump tested positive for COVID-19. And this is just the latest in what has been

a roller coaster year with an impeachment, a global pandemic, natural disasters, racial divisions,

a presidential election, a raucous first

debate, and now this. And many others have also contracted coronavirus like Chris Christie and

Senator Mike Lee. And we wish everyone a quick recovery. Since the news came out that the president and his wife have COVID-19,

I've gotten questions about what this means for the election if the president is in some way

incapacitated. And again, we hope that none of this is necessary, but it is an opportunity to discuss

what could happen in a worst case scenario or any number of scenarios.

Our guest today is Jane Hampton Cook. She's a historian, the author of Resilience on Parade,

a book about the women's suffrage movement, and numerous other books on American history.

I have a number of her books right now in my my library here.

Our listeners will recognize her since we had her on her on this show not too long ago.

So Jane, thanks for being on our show.

Thanks for having me.

So basically here we have the president potentially with an incapacitating ailment.

Hopefully that's not the case, but this brings up questions about what would happen.

So what possibly could happen if he is incapacitated before the election?

I think that's where the 25th Amendment would be invoked, because they passed the 25th

Amendment in the 60s after Kennedy's assassination and after Dwight Eisenhower's

illnesses in the 1950s.

And so what would happen, my understanding, is that Mike Pence, the vice president, would become acting president if the president is incapacitated and that they would have to invoke doing some paperwork, sending it over to Capitol Hill.

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