WASHINGTON, DC - APRIL 27: US President Donald Trump listens as Vice President Mike Pence answers questions during the daily briefing of the coronavirus task force in the Rose Garden of the White House on April 27, 2020 in Washington, DC.
Today's task force briefing is the first since Friday.
(Photo by Win McNamee / Getty Images)
Editor's Note:
Frida Ghitis, a former producer and CNN correspondent, is a columnist for world affairs.
She is a frequent contributor to the CNN opinion section, a contributing columnist for The Washington Post, and a columnist for the World Politics Review.
You can follow her on her Twitter account, @fridaghitis.
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You can read more articles like this at cnne.com/opinion.
(CNN) -
What else is needed?
President Donald Trump has led the country to depths of division, unrest and instability that would once have been unthinkable, even if they were completely predictable.
The entire world watched in horror as a crowd of Trump supporters, a frenzy incited by the president, stormed the U.S. Capitol, smashed windows, forced a lockdown, and temporarily put an end to a constitutionally mandated assertion of Trump's victory. President-elect Joe Biden in the November election.
What else is needed?
It is time for Vice President Mike Pence and members of the Cabinet to lift the country from the brink and remove Trump from office.
Trump only has a little less than two weeks left as president, but every day is a day when he is harming the nation.
Every day the damage becomes more difficult to heal.
Every day that you are in office, there is a very real chance that you will unleash your supporters in new and harmful ways.
It's no wonder people are using the term "civil war" when contemplating what might happen, although for now that, fortunately, still seems avoidable.
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The Capitol scenes are being watched by the whole world.
America has never been more deeply humiliated.
His reputation is in tatters.
But the country also faces one of the most crucial tests in its nearly 250-year history.
Will your democracy survive?
On the same day that Trump rallied his supporters, turning them into a violent, destructive and law-breaking mob, Pence managed to publicly confront the president for the first time.
As part of his preemptive coup attempt, his effort to prevent American citizens from having the president they chose, Trump had been pressuring Pence to reject the Electoral College vote that had confirmed Biden's victory.
January 6, as dictated by the Constitution, was the day Pence was supposed to fulfill the duty of presiding over a joint session of Congress in which both houses would count the Electoral College vote and declare Biden the winner.
Trump wanted him to somehow turn the event into an opportunity to block Biden's rise.
Pence found her voice and said "No."
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In a letter published just hours before the session, while Trump was speaking to his supporters at a rally, Pence said: “My oath to support and defend the Constitution prevents me from claiming unilateral authority to determine which electoral vote should and should not be counted. »
He concluded by noting that four years earlier he took the oath ending with "My God, help me," and he ended his letter by doing the same.
If Pence is thinking about his duty to the Constitution and seeking the strength of God, he must seek the courage to invoke the 25th Amendment.
Until today, Pence had been one of Trump's facilitators, one of his accomplices.
Now you have a chance to save the nation.
The Constitution did not give Pence the power to block Electoral College votes, but it does give him the ability to save the nation.
Amendment 25, Section 4, says:
«Provided that the vice president and the majority of the main officials of the executive departments or of any other body that Congress may provide by law, they shall transmit to the president pro tempore of the Senate and to the Speaker of the House of Representatives their written declaration that the president cannot carry out the powers and duties of his office, the vice president shall immediately assume the powers and duties of the office as interim president.
LOOK: What is the 25th Amendment and how does it work?
The United States is in the midst of a coup attempt by Trump and his supporters.
This is not a surprise.
It is the reason why the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Mark Milley, had to remind the troops and assure the country that the military would not get involved in internal politics.
It is the reason why all the living ex-Defense Secretaries wrote a letter saying that the military should stay out of the political process.
It was almost inconceivable that it needed to be said.
But does anyone now doubt that Trump would attempt to use the military to stay in power if they had the ability to do so?
The current national calamity is Trump's fault, but not just his.
Every member of Congress who allowed him - Mitch McConnell, Kevin McCarthy, Steve Scalise, Josh Hawley, Ted Cruz, every Republican who excused his increasingly alarming transgressions over the years - helped bring us to this place.
Those who joined his scandalous efforts to claim that the elections were rigged are even more to blame.
And yes, Pence has been one of those facilitators.
But now he has the ability to begin to atone.
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It should organize Trump's removal from power so that the country can at least limit Trump's ability to cause further injury to the nation.
Two weeks in office is not a long time, but the risk now is too great.
Despite pleas from inside and outside the building, Trump was slow to instruct his supporters to leave the Capitol.
Pence, with newfound strength, told them to "get out of the building immediately."
When Trump finally released a video telling them to go home, he used it to repeat the lie that the election was stolen and appeared to be preparing his supporters for another push.
By then, of course, Trump had already turned the mobs against his vice president.
What else is needed?
The whole world is watching.
You are seeing guns being fired inside the House of Representatives, just yards from elected members of Congress.
You are watching Trump mobs try to replace the American flag with a Trump flag over the Capitol.
It is seeing the rioters on the podium chair that presides over the Senate, threatening the police inside the Capitol, violating the sanctity of what was once the sanctuary of representative democracy.
What else is needed?