Tuesday on MSNBC’s “All In” in light of Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump’s comments today about the Second Amendment and his opponent Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton, Former New Hampshire Senator Gordon Humphrey (R-NH) said Trump is a “nut cake” and a “looney bird,” so he has “issued a call to members of the RNC this afternoon to demand an emergency meeting of the Republican National Committee to strip Donald Trump of the nomination and to replace him with someone of sound mind.”
Partial transcript as follows:
HUMPHREY: Yes, Chris, good evening. I’ve reviewed that tape a number of times. Notwithstanding what Rudy Guiliani just said, it’s very clear what Donald Trump was implying, namely that gun people could wreak violence against Hillary Clinton. And against the history of assassinations in the United States of presidents and against the more recent history of indiscriminate gun violence and tragedy on a grand scale, it’s unthinkable that any candidate for president would make such a statement. And it only reinforces again what so many of us have been saying, that Donald Trump is possessed of an unbalanced mind. In the common parlance, the man is a nut cake, he is a looney bird. And it would be the height of irresponsibility to elevate him to the presidency. It would be recklessness to make him commander in chief. I’ve issued a call to members of the RNC this afternoon to demand an emergency meeting of the Republican National Committee to strip Donald Trump of the nomination and to replace him with someone of sound mind
HAYES: You’re calling on the RNC to—can they do that? Is that something the RNC could do? Impanel an emergency meeting to strip him of the nomination?
HUMPHREY: Well, Rule Nine empowers the RNC to replace a candidate who dies or who refuses to run. That same language contains the word “otherwise,” which is meant to be a catch-all for all other things including presumably, disability, mental or physical. Let me point out this, there’s a very strong model for that kind of action in the Constitution of the United States. The president’s cabinet, a majority of the president’s cabinet, can declare the president to be physically or mentally unfit to exercise the powers of his office, and immediately thereupon those powers are transferred to the vice president. Now if the president is conscious, he may appeal to the House, and that initiates another process of appeal. But the fact is, the president’s cabinet, a majority of them, can remove the president, effectively from office, at least temporarily. And if the Constitution empowers the cabinet to do that, surely the RNC can do the same thing in a moral crisis such as this. The national interest demands it.
HAYES: This is very—this is strong. You’re a two-term senator from New Hampshire, a Republican in good standing. You’re not someone who’s left the party and gone on to some sort of retirement years as a crypto liberal or something. You endorsed John Kasich. You consider yourself a member of this party in good standing. How do you feel about watching this unfold?
HUMPHREY: I need to tell you, Chris, that I’ve been on the verge of resigning from the party now for—ever since Cleveland. But I’ve decided I can be more effective by remaining within the party and fighting for some sensible resolution to this crisis. The RNC can solve it. The hour is late, to be sure. But there is still time to effectuate a change to replace Donald Trump and to appoint someone of a sound mind, a sane man or woman, hopefully with substantially more experience than Donald Trump and a lot more knowledge, wisdom. There’s time to do that. There is, if you examine it in detail, there is time to do that. Some say that it’s too late to remove Donald Trump’s name from the ballot. In a number of states, that is true now, and in more states, it will be true in like two weeks. But remember this, it’s the electoral college that elects the president. That happens in December. If Donald Trump has been replaced as nominee by the RNC, votes cast for Donald Trump in those states where his name is on the ballot almost certainly will be allotted to the new nominee of the Republican party. So even that problem can be overcome.
Follow Pam Key on Twitter @pamkeyNEN
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