WASHINGTON — House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., says she plans to talk about the 25th Amendment, which outlines presidential transfer of power procedures, on Friday.
Pelosi told reporters during her weekly press conference at the Capitol Thursday to come to the Hill “tomorrow” because she said, “We’re going to be talking about the 25th Amendment.”
Pelosi did not elaborate what she planned to say Friday, and a request for clarification was not immediately returned by her leadership office.
Asked whether she thought it was time to invoke the 25th Amendment because of President Donald Trump’s illness, Pelosi said she didn’t want to talk about it right then.
“If you want to talk about that, we’ll see you tomorrow,” said Pelosi, who then questioned why the White House has refused to reveal when the president had his last negative Covid-19 test.
The 25th Amendment provides for procedures for transferring power to the vice president in the cases of death, incapacitation, removal or resignation. The amendment was ratified and approved in the wake of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. One of its sections provides the vice president and the Cabinet a mechanism to transfer power from the president.
In an interview immediately after her press conference, Pelosi suggested that the president may not be thinking clearly because of the drugs he has taken while being treated for the disease.
“The president is, shall we say, in an altered state right now,” Pelosi said on Bloomberg TV. “I don’t know how to answer for that behavior.”
She continued, “There are those who say when you are on steroids or have COVID-19, there may be some impairment of judgment.”
In a free-wheeling interview on the Fox Business Network Thursday morning, Trump praised his medical care and downplayed the dangers of the coronavirus, saying he thought his infection “would have gone away by itself” without treatment.
“I don’t think I am contagious at all,” Trump added. “I stand very far away from everybody, whether I was or not, I wouldn’t, I still wouldn’t go to a rally if contagious.”
Trump is still within the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s isolation window following the onset of symptoms on Thursday. CDC guidelines stipulate that people should isolate for 10 days from the point of showing systems and 20 days in severe cases.
