There’s a way to remove Donald Trump from office without impeachment. It comes from another section of the Constitution — and the man who controls most of that power is Trump’s Vice President: Mike Pence.

Source: MSNBC, via YouTube

Rough transcript:

We are now a month into the most incompetent and the most overtly corrupt presidency in history and I know that sounds like editorial comment but it is simply fact it would be impossible for an honest Trump supporter to point to a more incompetent and chaotic first month of any other presidency and it would be impossible to point to a more overtly corrupt first month of a presidency overtly corrupt the Nixon presidency ended in flames of corruption but none of that corruption was overt in the first month of the Nixon presidency Corruption President Nixon was not obtaining copyrights for his businesses from foreign governments while changing his foreign policy for that country that granted him a copyright as Donald Trump has done with China President Nixon did not have a lease on a federal building in Washington where he ran a hotel business in direct violation of the government’s terms of that lease which forbids an elected official from holding that lease no president has ever spent his weekends selling access to himself through a private club in Florida that the president owns no president has ever done anything like those things in Donald Trump has done all of that overtly publicly it may be years before we know all the Nick Sounion behind the scenes corruption that President Trump might have a hand in but as of now he is the most overtly corrupt presidency in history and it’s only been a month the month that feels like a year how long can this go on that’s what everyone’s asking themselves how long four years a presidency defined by incompetence and corruption spinning out of control four years of that we’ve never seen that before the less of the Nixon presidency is that when the trouble starts and when the corruption starts to go public the end can come quickly on this day in 1973 one month into the second term of President Nixon no one in America was using the word impeachment no one in a mirror was thinking that Richard Nixon wasn’t going to get four more years on this very day in 1973 a month into President Nixon’s second term the New York Times New York Times front page did not have a single corruption story about President Nixon Nixon hated the New York Times but on this day there was nothing for him to complain about February 20th 1973 and there he was in the front page with his labor secretary and the president of the afl-cio talking about international trade and on the editorial page The Romantics The Times editorializing about the International Monetary Fund the draconian sentencing for drug crime that governor Rockefeller was advocating an amnesty for draft evaders and deserters during the Vietnam War the kind of amnesty the Times pointed out that was supported by presidents Jefferson Madison Jackson and Lincoln scandal in the White House was so far from the minds of anyone at the New York Times that day that they even found space for a short editorial entitled the Romantics which contains my favorite New York Times sentence ever in a sense squirrels are romantics that editorial was an ambitious poetic turn about the coming of spring that’s where we were on this very day in the second term of the Nixon presidency when no one in American knew that in the next year the president would be facing impeachment hearings in the House of Representatives and would resign the presidency 18 months after taking the oath of office 18 months after New York Times editorial about how romantic squirrels are today the New York Times has no room for an editorial about the romance of squirrels every day the New York Times reporting is adding to the corruption file of the Trump administration and they’re not the only news organization doing that all of which makes mike pence Mike Pence the most dangerous man in Donald Trump’s life and at some point even Donald Trump will realize that while Donald Trump was The Most Dangerous Man at home in Florida today Mike Pence was in Brussels looking in founding presidential in the Republican sense at least and Mike Pence was asked a question that no other vice president has been asked who should European leaders listen to you or President Trump imagine how a question like that drives Donald Trump crazy who should we listen to who is the real President of the United States is it Mike Pence and that question is not going away what makes Mike Pence the most dangerous man in the world for Donald Trump is that Mike Pence is a standard-issue Republican president a no-drama Republican president someone who world leaders would be completely comfortable with they’ve all dealt with a version of Mike Pence and the presidency before and Mike Pence would be a president that most Republicans in the House and the Senate would be more comfortable with he’s one of them what an incompetent incoherent president needs most is a vice president who scares people even more than the president does so that no one starts to think getting rid of the president would make anything better but Donald Trump has Mike Pence who would be better received around the world and would be better liked and respected by congressional Republicans and here is something the president does not know about his vice president something that should make Donald Trump fear Mike Pence more than anyone else in the world it is uniquely within Mike Pence’s power to take the presidency away from Donald Trump the vice president has the constitutional power to do that thanks to the wisdom of the 25th amendment enacted in 1967 the 25th amendment provided for some situations that the founding fathers had not foreseen like the vacancy of the Vice Presidency which tragically occurred in 1963 when President Kennedy was assassinated and then in the age of modern medicine it became clear by the 1960s that we could have a present who was on some kind of protracted life support leaving no one would be constitutional authority to act as president and so section 4 of the 25th amendment says the Vice President shall become acting present that’s the title acting president whenever the vice president and a majority of the cabinet decide that the president is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office people have always assumed that that provision is to be invoked only in health situations but there is nothing in the language of the amendment that defines what it means to be unable to discharge the powers and duties of the office that is entirely up to the vice president and a majority of the cabinet they don’t need Donald Trump to become medically unable to do the job they don’t need a written opinion from a psychiatrist that Donald Trump is insane if the president objects to such an action taken by the vice president and the majority of the cabinet then the amendment provides that quote Congress shall decide the issue and that will be determined by a two-thirds vote of both houses of Congress and when those votes are counted Mike Pence could become Acting President that would be that title acting president and no one no one but Mike Pence has the individual power to start that whole process that leads to Mike Pence becoming Acting President imagine how Donald Trump is going to feel about Mike Pence when he finds out about section four of the 25th amendment I first started talking about the 25th amendment on Twitter weeks ago and now the subject has gained a bit of momentum when I first mentioned the 25th amendment no one in Congress was then questioning the mental health of the President of the United States as at least one senator and a couple of members of Congress have now done with President Trump we now know that President Nixon’s mental stability became fragile toward the end of his presidency as he was facing impeachment hearings but at this point in the Nixon presidency no senator would have gone on television as Al Franken did recently and wonder aloud about the president’s sanity psychiatrists and psychologists are increasingly going public most recently in their times with their concerns about the president’s mental stability we can expect more more of them to be going public with those concerns as Donald Trump press conferences continue to exhibit the symptoms that mental health professionals are most concerned about one month we are one month in at this point in a presidency it is supposed to be impossible to imagine impeach impeachment it is supposed to be impossible to imagine a vice president invoking the 25th 25th amendment and taking over the presidency but in the age of Trump the impossible to imagine has become history right before our eyes it was impossible to imagine the reality TV buffoon becoming the Republican nominee for president it was impossible to imagine ever having to say the words President Trump that was once impossible it may be impossible for Mike Pence to imagine tonight using his constitutional power to invoke the 25th Amendment against his president but who knows what another month will bring another two months who knows what another year will bring a year of this is now unimaginable how low can a president’s poll numbers go Donald Trump seems to be on his way to finding out and as those poll numbers sink everyday Mike Pence becomes more dangerous to Donald Trump because Donald Trump made the mistake of choosing a vice president who is more acceptable to the world and far more acceptable to the congressional leadership the Republican Party than Donald Trump has ever been or can ever be how long can this go on for years impeachment a 25th amendment and the age of Trump anything is possible hey there I’m Chris Hayes from MSNBC thanks for watching.