"EX-CIA HEAD DEMANDS TRUMP BE OUSTED: Shockwaves Hit Washington! 1
BRENNAN DID CALL FOR TRUMP'S REMOVAL UNDER THE 25TH AMENDMENT - BUT THE APRIL REMARKS WERE POLITICAL ADVOCACY, NOT A CONSTITUTIONAL FINDING OF INCAPACITY
Former CIA Director John Brennan did say in April 2026 that President Donald Trump was 'clearly unhinged' and that the 25th Amendment was 'written with Donald Trump in mind' after Trump threatened that Iran's 'whole civilization' could die if Tehran rejected a U.S. ultimatum. More than 70 congressional Democrats were calling for impeachment or Section 4 of the 25th Amendment around the same period. But Brennan has no constitutional role in triggering Section 4, lawmakers cannot invoke it by themselves, and the amendment was designed for presidential inability rather than punishment for controversial policy or rhetoric. Its text also does not require a medical diagnosis, and its deliberately flexible standard has never been tested through a completed Section 4 transfer of power.
Updated and fact-checked through Sept. 13, 2026.
Brennan's Quote Is Real - and It Dates to April, Not the Current September Escalation
Brennan made the remarks during an April 11 interview with Ali Velshi on MS NOW, amid intense criticism of Trump's conduct of the Iran war.
He called Trump 'clearly unhinged' and said he believed the 25th Amendment was 'written with Donald Trump in mind.' He argued that allowing Trump to continue controlling U.S. military power, including nuclear forces, posed an unacceptable risk.
The comments were widely reported on April 12. They were not a new September statement, even though they can resurface whenever the Iran conflict escalates again.
The quotation is authentic. A current article should make clear that Brennan's call for Section 4 came in April 2026, not as a fresh response to this week's developments.
Trump's 'Whole Civilization' Threat Was Also Real
Brennan's comments followed an extraordinary April 7 threat from Trump during a confrontation over the Strait of Hormuz.
Trump wrote that a 'whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again' if Iran did not meet his deadline. The statement drew widespread criticism and renewed calls from Democrats for impeachment or use of the 25th Amendment.
Brennan interpreted Trump's language as potentially implicating America's nuclear capabilities. Trump did not explicitly say in that post that he intended to use a nuclear weapon.
The threat to Iran was real and extreme. Brennan's nuclear interpretation was his inference from the scale of Trump's language, not an explicit nuclear order announced by the president.
More Than 70 Congressional Democrats Joined Removal Calls - but Congress Cannot Trigger Section 4 Alone
By the time Brennan spoke, more than 70 Democratic members of Congress had publicly supported invoking the 25th Amendment or otherwise removing Trump over the Iran crisis, according to contemporaneous reporting.
Those lawmakers could lobby the vice president, hold hearings, pursue impeachment or enact legislation creating an alternative Section 4 body. They could not, however, initiate a Section 4 transfer of presidential power on their own.
The Constitution requires the vice president to participate in the initial declaration, together with a majority of the Cabinet's principal officers or a majority of another body Congress has created by law for that purpose.
Calls from lawmakers are political pressure. They do not themselves activate the 25th Amendment.
Section 4 Is About 'Inability,' Not Punishment for Misconduct
Section 4 authorizes an involuntary transfer of presidential powers when the vice president and the required executive officials determine that the president is 'unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office.'
The amendment's legislative history focused heavily on physical and mental inability: coma, severe illness, incapacitating injury or a mental condition that prevents rational decision-making or the communication of decisions.
Constitutional scholars generally agree that Section 4 was not designed as a substitute for impeachment or as a mechanism for removing a president merely because officials regard a policy decision as reckless, immoral or unpopular.
Brennan's argument can be understood as a claim that Trump's conduct demonstrated incapacity. It cannot simply redefine ordinary policy disagreement as constitutional 'inability.'
The Article Overstates the Requirement for 'Objective Medical Evidence'
The constitutional text does not require a doctor's diagnosis, medical test or formal finding of psychiatric illness before Section 4 can be invoked.
The amendment's drafters deliberately used the flexible word 'unable' because they could not foresee every circumstance that might make a president incapable of carrying out the office. Historical explanations include physical and mental conditions, kidnapping and other extraordinary situations.
That flexibility does not make Section 4 a general political no-confidence vote. It does mean that saying the amendment can be used only after 'clear, objective medical evidence' is too categorical.
Medical evidence could be highly relevant, but the Constitution does not make it a formal prerequisite. The controlling standard is inability to discharge presidential powers and duties.
The Amendment Was Ratified in 1967 After a Long Succession and Disability Debate
The 25th Amendment was proposed by Congress in 1965 and ratified in 1967. President John F. Kennedy's assassination gave new urgency to longstanding uncertainty about presidential succession and disability.
Its first sections clarify succession to the presidency, filling a vice-presidential vacancy and voluntary temporary transfer of power. Section 4 addresses the hardest case: a president who cannot or will not acknowledge an inability.
Calling the people who designed the amendment the original constitutional 'Framers' can be confusing. The relevant architects were 20th-century lawmakers including Sen. Birch Bayh and Rep. Richard Poff.
The amendment was built to solve continuity and incapacity problems, not to create an easier alternative to impeachment whenever a president's conduct alarms political opponents.
The Section 4 Process Is More Precise Than the Viral Flowcharts Suggest
The first step requires the vice president and a majority of the Cabinet's principal officers - or another body Congress may establish by law - to send a written declaration of inability to the House speaker and the Senate president pro tempore. The vice president then immediately becomes Acting President.
If the president declares that no inability exists, he resumes his powers unless the vice president and the same majority send a renewed declaration within four days.
Congress then decides the dispute. If two-thirds of both the House and Senate determine within the constitutional time limit that the president remains unable, the vice president continues as Acting President; otherwise the president resumes his powers.
Section 4 transfers the powers and duties of the presidency; it does not itself remove the president from the office in the same legal sense as resignation, death or impeachment and conviction.
The Two-Thirds Requirement Applies Only After a Contested Declaration
A common simplification says Section 4 always requires two-thirds votes in both chambers. That is not quite right.
Congress becomes decisive only if the president contests the initial declaration and the vice president plus the required majority renew their finding within four days.
If the president does not contest the declaration, or cannot do so, the vice president can continue exercising the presidential powers as Acting President without an immediate two-thirds congressional vote.
The two-thirds House and Senate threshold is the final backstop in a contested case, not the opening step.
Brennan Has No Formal Role in the Constitutional Process
Brennan served as CIA director under President Barack Obama, but he left government in 2017.
As a former official and private citizen, he is free to criticize Trump and advocate constitutional action. His national-security experience may shape how audiences evaluate his warning.
But he has no authority to declare presidential inability. He is not the vice president, a current Cabinet officer or a member of a congressionally designated Section 4 body.
Brennan's statement was political and constitutional advocacy by a former intelligence chief, not an institutional determination by the CIA or the executive branch.
There Was No Sign Vance or Trump's Cabinet Were Preparing to Invoke Section 4
At the time of the April debate, public reporting described Vice President JD Vance, Trump's Cabinet and congressional Republicans as strongly supportive of the president.
No Section 4 declaration was issued, and there was no public indication that Vance and a Cabinet majority were preparing one.
That political reality made the Democratic and Brennan calls extraordinarily unlikely to succeed even before any debate about whether Trump's conduct met the constitutional definition of inability.
A Section 4 campaign without the vice president is constitutionally inert. No formal invocation followed Brennan's call.
Trump's Latest Official Medical Assessment Does Not Support a Medical-Incapacity Claim
In May, the White House released the results of Trump's annual physical at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center.
The president's physician said Trump had strong cardiac, pulmonary, neurological and overall physical function, described his cognitive and physical performance as excellent and said he was fully fit to perform presidential duties.
Outside physicians have raised questions about the level of detail released in presidential health summaries, and a White House medical memo cannot settle every political argument about judgment or temperament.
The current official medical record does not contain a finding that Trump is physically or cognitively incapable of serving. Brennan's argument was based on behavior and judgment, not a disclosed medical diagnosis.
The Iran War Makes the Judgment Debate More Consequential - but Not Easier
The U.S.-Iran conflict did not end after the April controversy. By September, it had continued for roughly seven months, with renewed attacks on shipping, military positions and energy infrastructure.
Trump has repeatedly defended the war as necessary to prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons and to destroy capabilities he says threaten Americans and U.S. allies. His administration describes the strategy as military deterrence backed by overwhelming force.
Critics argue that the prolonged conflict, threats against civilian infrastructure and repeated escalation demonstrate reckless judgment rather than successful deterrence.
The war's duration and costs make scrutiny of presidential judgment legitimate. They still do not mechanically answer the distinct constitutional question whether the president is 'unable' to perform the office.
'Peace Through Strength' Is a Strategic Argument, Not a Fact-Check Conclusion
Supporters of Trump's Iran policy compare his approach with Ronald Reagan's emphasis on military strength and pressure against adversaries.
That analogy is a political interpretation. The end of the Cold War resulted from multiple forces, including Soviet economic weakness, internal reform under Mikhail Gorbachev, popular movements in Eastern Europe, diplomacy, arms-control negotiations and Western military and economic pressure.
Likewise, whether Trump's threats deter Iran or prolong escalation is an empirical question that can only be assessed against the conflict's actual results.
A fact-check can verify what Trump threatened and what happened afterward. It cannot label 'peace through strength' or diplomatic restraint as inherently correct without turning analysis into advocacy.
Brennan Is Under Federal Scrutiny - but That Does Not Decide Whether His 25th Amendment Argument Is Right
Brennan's own conduct has become the subject of a Trump-era Justice Department investigation concerning the 2017 intelligence assessment of Russian interference in the 2016 election and his later congressional testimony.
House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan referred Brennan to DOJ in October 2025, alleging that Brennan knowingly made false statements to Congress. Brennan denies wrongdoing.
Reuters reported on Sept. 10 that a broader Florida-based probe had examined Brennan and other former officials but had produced no criminal charges. The Trump-aligned prosecutor overseeing that investigation had just resigned, creating new uncertainty about its direction.
The investigation is a relevant disclosure about Brennan's current status. It is not a conviction, and it does not prove or disprove his constitutional analysis of Trump's fitness.
The 'Weaponized Intelligence' Debate Also Requires Evidentiary Discipline
Trump allies and current intelligence officials have released documents and reports accusing Obama-era officials of politicizing intelligence surrounding Russia's 2016 election interference and the later Trump-Russia investigations.
Brennan and other former officials dispute allegations of criminal conspiracy. Prior investigations identified serious errors and disputed analytic choices but did not establish the broad criminal conspiracy alleged by Trump's supporters.
The current DOJ inquiry remains active and contested.
Skepticism toward a former intelligence official can be politically understandable. Criminal or institutional misconduct still has to be proved on evidence rather than inferred from partisan alignment.
Impeachment and the 25th Amendment Serve Different Constitutional Functions
If the central accusation is that a president committed misconduct, abused power or pursued an unlawful war, impeachment is the Constitution's political mechanism for addressing high crimes and misdemeanors.
Section 4 addresses inability. The two mechanisms can arise around the same events, but they answer different constitutional questions and require different decision-makers.
That distinction is why some Democrats in April called for impeachment, others for the 25th Amendment and some for both.
Using Section 4 to punish conduct would risk confusing incapacity with accountability. Using impeachment to address genuine inability would create the opposite mismatch.
The Strongest Defensible Conclusion
John Brennan did call for Trump's removal from presidential power under the 25th Amendment after Trump's April threat that an entire Iranian civilization could die. His statement was authentic, severe and part of a broader wave of Democratic calls for Trump to be removed during the Iran crisis.
But Brennan's description of the amendment as 'written with Trump in mind' was rhetoric, not constitutional history. Section 4 was designed decades before Trump's presidency to address situations in which a president is unable to discharge the office, especially serious physical or mental incapacity, while deliberately leaving the term 'unable' flexible enough for unforeseen emergencies.
The amendment does not require a formal medical diagnosis, but it was not intended as a shortcut for removing a president merely because opponents regard his policy choices or rhetoric as reckless. And Brennan himself has no role in initiating the process: the vice president is indispensable.
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Trump's Iran rhetoric and the continuing war raise serious questions about strategy, legality, judgment and risk. Those questions belong in congressional oversight, elections, war-powers debates and, where legally appropriate, impeachment analysis. They do not automatically establish constitutional incapacity.
The strongest verified conclusion is that Brennan made a legitimate political argument for invoking an extraordinary constitutional mechanism, not a legal finding that the mechanism's standard had been met. The 25th Amendment protects continuity of government when a president is unable to serve; it should not be treated either as a partisan no-confidence vote or as a remedy that can never apply without a medical chart. Evidence of actual inability - not mere agreement or disagreement with presidential policy - is the constitutional question that matters.
