In an op-ed published anonymously at the New York Times, a senior Trump administration official says:

Given the instability many witnessed, there were early whispers within the cabinet of invoking the 25th Amendment, which would start a complex process for removing the president. But no one wanted to precipitate a constitutional crisis. So we will do what we can to steer the administration in the right direction until — one way or another — it’s over.

The bigger concern is not what Mr. Trump has done to the presidency but rather what we as a nation have allowed him to do to us. We have sunk low with him and allowed our discourse to be stripped of civility.

David Frum calls on the author to step out of the shadows:

Speak in your own name. Resign in a way that will count. Present the evidence that will justify an invocation of the 25th Amendment, or an impeachment, or at the very least, the first necessary step toward either outcome, a Democratic Congress after the November elections.

Your service in government is valuable. Thank you for it. But it is not so indispensable that it can compensate for the continuing tenure of a president you believe to be amoral, untruthful, irrational, anti-democratic, unpatriotic, and dangerous. Previous generations of Americans have sacrificed fortunes, health, and lives to serve the country. You are asked only to tell the truth aloud and with your name attached.

Timothy L. O’Brien writes:

A vibrant democracy rides on the back of voting, transparency and the rule of law. When unelected officials act unilaterally and in secrecy because they work for an inept executive who doesn’t respect the law, then you have yourself a crisis.

Similar things have happened before. In 1919, for example, President Woodrow Wilson became paralyzed and partially blind following a stroke. Wilson’s doctor and his wife, Edith, covered up the president’s condition and Edith administered his executive powers while keeping Wilson’s cabinet and the Congress ill-informed and at a distance. Edith continued her stealth presidency until Wilson’s term ended in 1921.

It wasn’t until the 25th Amendment was passed in 1967, 48 years after Wilson’s stroke and four years after John F. Kennedy’s assassination, that a clear procedure for replacing an incapacitated or dead president was put into place.

Trump, of course, is neither incapacitated nor dead. He is merely tragicomically out of his depth (as Bob Woodward’s upcoming book, and Trump’s own history, have substantiated).