Who's Watching Trump To Make Sure He Doesn't Do Anything Dangerous?

Last night Trump's Art of the Deal ghostwriter, Tony Schwartz, told CNN viewers on Anderson Coope’s 360 that Señor Trumpanzee is having a "significant meltdown. He’s in pure defensive mode. I think that he’s being run by the part of his brain that’s reactive and impulsive, not capable of reflection... The sense of siege that he feels because his sense of self-worth is so, so vulnerable that the series of things that have happened are overwhelming to him." This morning he took to twitter to whine about how unfair life is to him.

Katie Glueck, writing for McClatchy: "Pangs of fear and frustration are rippling through the Republican donor and operative classes as Donald Trump's self-inflicted wounds threaten to fully derail the GOP legislative agenda and tarnish the party's brand headed into the midterm."

Last night, the Time's Nick Kristof speculated that "the Trump presidency may now be disintegrating, tumbling toward entropy... If Trump thought he was removing a thorn by firing Comey, he now faces a grove of thistles." He seemed concerned about the dangers ahead for the country.

One is that America will be incapacitated and paralyzed by Mueller’s investigation and the suspicions-- this partly explains the stock market’s big fall on Wednesday-- and foreign powers may take advantage of this to undertake their own mischief. I would worry about Russia in both Ukraine and the Baltic countries, and we must make clear that we will work with allies to respond in kind.

Another danger is the risk of an erratic, embattled, paranoid leader at home who feels that he may be going down the tubes anyway. In domestic policy, presidents are constrained by Congress and the courts about what damage they can cause, but in foreign policy a president has a largely free hand-- and the ability to launch nuclear strikes that would pretty much destroy the world.

In 1974, as Richard Nixon’s presidency was collapsing, he was drinking heavily and aides worried that he was becoming unstable. Fearing what might go wrong, Nixon’s defense secretary, James Schlesinger, secretly instructed the military not to carry out any White House order to use nuclear weapons unless confirmed by him or Henry Kissinger.

This was unconstitutional. And wise.

Schlesinger also prepared secret plans to deploy troops in Washington in the event of problems with the presidential succession.

We don’t know how Trump will respond in the coming months, and let’s all hope for smooth sailing. But as with Schlesinger’s steps, it’s wise to be prepared.

There have been calls for Trump aides to resign rather than ruin their reputations, but I hope the grown-ups-- H. R. McMaster, Jim Mattis, Dina Powell, John Kelly, Rex Tillerson-- grit their teeth and stick it out. The White House has never needed more adult supervision.

The cabinet has the constitutional power to remove a president by majority vote under the 25th Amendment (if the president protests, this must be confirmed by two-thirds of each chamber of Congress). Such a vote is unlikely, but in the event of a crisis like the one Schlesinger envisioned, it would be essential.

I hope that cabinet members are keeping one another’s cellphone numbers handy in case an emergency meeting becomes necessary for our nation.