Trump’s own former lawyer just called him ‘a madman’ and demanded a law that’s never once been used against a president

There is a new push to invoke the 25th Amendment to remove Donald Trump from office, a constitutional mechanism that has never been used to strip a sitting president of his power. The call is coming from Ty Cobb, a former lawyer who served on Trump’s legal team during his first presidency, and who has now publicly turned against him. As detailed by LADbible, Cobb described the current political climate as being under the governance of “a madman.”

Cobb worked on the legal response to Robert Mueller’s investigation into potential 2016 election interference between July 2017 and May 2018, and says he never voted for the 79-year-old. He is now openly questioning Trump’s mental fitness, suggesting during an interview with The i Paper that Trump is experiencing significant cognitive decline, pointing to what he described as “frontal lobe decline” and “possible dementia.”

“The narcissism has always been an issue for him but in an absence of the impulse control the frontal lobe provides it has unleashed furiously, which is why we see revenge, corruption, delusions of grandeur and [alleged] abuses of power,” Cobb said. He noted that while Trump was erratic during his first term, he at least had a “safety net” of aides who would step in to restrain his more dangerous impulses, and that safety net is now gone, replaced by a circle of people who won’t challenge him.

The White House is not taking this lying down

Cobb added, “The man I observed in the first term was erratic but the man I observe now is erratic without a safety net.” He further criticized the president for his late-night social media behavior, attacks on prominent figures, and for making public threats about war crimes at 4:00 AM, concluding, “We’re governed by a madman at this stage, there’s no other way to put it.”

The White House pushed back sharply. Spokesperson Davis Ingle told LADbible that Cobb should “immediately seek psychiatric help to treat his severe case of Trump Derangement Syndrome,” also suggesting Cobb “should also shave that caterpillar off his face.” Ingle defended the president by pointing to what he called Trump’s “sharpness, unmatched energy, and historic accessibility” compared to the previous administration.

Cobb’s comments are fueling renewed interest in Section 4 of the 25th Amendment, which allows the vice president and a majority of the cabinet to declare that the president is “unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office.” If invoked, the vice president immediately assumes the role of acting president. If the president disputes this, Congress must step in, and a two-thirds vote in both the House and the Senate is required to keep the vice president in charge, a historically untested bar.

The amendment was ratified on February 10, 1967, following the assassination of John F. Kennedy, to address ambiguities in presidential succession and disability. While Sections 1, 2, and 3 have been used for things like filling vice presidential vacancies or temporary transfers of power during medical procedures, Section 4 remains entirely untested. Legal scholars have noted that the framers intentionally left the terms “unable” and “inability” undefined to cover unforeseen emergencies, while being careful to ensure the process could not be easily exploited for political disagreement.

This is not the first time the amendment has been raised in connection with Trump. Following January 6, some cabinet members reportedly discussed the possibility, and the House passed a non-binding resolution urging Mike Pence to invoke it, which he refused. In April 2026, the issue resurfaced again amid Trump’s escalating threats toward Iran after he posted, “A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again,” prompting over 50 House Democrats to formally call for the amendment’s invocation.

That post was not an isolated incident. Earlier, a profanity-filled Easter Truth Social post had also triggered widespread calls from lawmakers and former officials for the amendment to be triggered, though the procedural and political hurdles remained as steep as ever. Pence, for his part, had argued in January that invoking the amendment would only further divide the country. The most recent push similarly faces those same obstacles.