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Friday, November 19, 2021

Biden to transfer power to Harris while under anesthesia during colonoscopy


Jake Lahut

22 minutes ago


U.S. President Joe Biden talks to reporters as Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi watches after the president met with Democratic lawmakers at the U.S. Capitol to promote his bipartisan infrastructure bill on Capitol Hill in Washington, U.S., October 1, 2021. REUTERS/Tom Brenner
  • President Joe Biden is undergoing a colonoscopy procedure.
  • He will transfer power to VP Kamala Harris, according to the White House.
  • This is the same procedure Trump kept secret to avoid giving Mike Pence temporary power, Stephanie Grisham suggested in her memoir.

The White House announced that President Joe Biden will undergo a colonoscopy procedure on Friday and transfer his presidential duties to Vice President Kamala Harris while under anesthesia.

Biden's procedure comes as the House voted to pass his nearly $2 trillion social spending plan before sending it over to the Senate.

In 2019, the Trump White House handled the same procedure very differently, according to former White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham. In her recent memoir, Grisham suggested that when Trump had to go in for a colonoscopy, he kept it secret from the public and refused anesthesia so he wouldn't have to transfer power to former Vice President Mike Pence.

In 2002, former President George W. Bush became the first US president to invoke section 3 of the 25th Amendment to temporarily transfer power to former Vice President Dick Cheney when he had to get a colonoscopy. Bush did the same again in 2007 for the same procedure.

Following several instances involving a vice president having to step in while a president was briefly incapacitated, the 25th Amendment was officially ratified in 1967 after two years of states voting on it.

Former President Lyndon B. Johnson was unable to invoke it for a medical procedure in 1965 because it wasn't ratified yet.

"It was 180 years ago, in the closing days of the Constitutional Convention, that the Founding Fathers debated the question of Presidential disability," Johnson said at the time. "John Dickinson of Delaware asked this question: 'What is the extent of the term 'disability' and who is to be the judge of it?' No one replied. It is hard to believe that until last week our Constitution provided no clear answer. Now, at last, the 25th amendment clarifies the crucial clause that provides for succession to the Presidency and for filling a Vice Presidential vacancy."



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