A third of U.S. adults support removing Joe Biden from the presidency by invoking the 25th amendment, a new poll conducted on behalf of Newsweek has found.
The amendment, adopted in 1967 and which sets the order of presidential succession, allows for the vice president and a majority of cabinet members to declare that the president "is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office." The vice president would then assume the role.
A survey of 1,500 U.S. adults conducted between February 18-19 by Redfield & Wilton Strategies found that 37 percent support invoking the 25th amendment in order to remove Biden from office, with 33 percent opposing such a move and 22 percent indifferent.
However, the proportion of those in favor of invoking the mechanism to remove the president may be influenced by the relatively high number of Donald Trump voters—52 percent of those polled—who supported the move, compared to a relatively low number of Biden voters, 26 percent. It still suggests more than a quarter of those who voted for Biden in 2020 no longer want him in office.
Newsweek reached out to the White House via email for comment on Thursday.
Biden will be turning 82 just weeks after Election Day in November and will be 86 by the end of a potential second term. Sworn in at age 78, he is already the oldest U.S. president in history. Trump, his likely Republican challenger, is 77 years old.
Biden has faced concerns about his age and mental acuity, which resurface following public gaffes, but he has brushed off queries about his physical and mental health, stating in 2022: "I no more think of myself as being as old as I am than a fly."
In a recent report concerning the holding of classified documents, Special Counsel Robert Hur—a Republican attorney appointed by Trump—questioned the president's mental fitness, describing the president's memory as "significantly limited" during interviews and stating that he could not remember when his vice presidential term ended, nor when his son Beau died.
After Hur's report emerged, Biden appeared angered by some of the assertions in the report, telling a news conference on Thursday: "I don't need anyone—anyone—to remind me when [Beau] passed away."
The Newsweek poll also found that half of those asked agreed that Biden was currently not mentally capable of discharging the duties of the presidency, compared to just 28 percent who disagreed. The same number agreed with Hur's assessment that Biden was "an elderly man with a poor memory," contrary to 22 percent who disagreed.
These sentiments were highest among Trump voters, with 70 percent agreeing that Biden was mentally unfit, compared to just 23 percent of those who voted for the president in 2020. An even greater proportion of Trump voters—76 percent—sided with Hur's remarks, to 30 percent of Democrat voters.
When broken down by age, Millennial respondents were marginally more likely to see Biden as mentally unfit than those aged 18-26 and those aged 43 or older.
Recent polling suggests support for Biden among younger Democrat voters has plummeted through his term, with some attributing the dissatisfaction to concessions his administration has made on the environment. In 2020, Biden won 65 percent of votes cast by 18-24-year-olds and 54 percent among those aged 25-29.
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Aleks Phillips is a Newsweek U.S. News Reporter based in London. His focus is on U.S. politics and the environment. ... Read more
