So the supreme court already ruled the president cannot be held accountable for anyone they kill.
The vice president becomes the president instantly if the president dies.
What is preventing any vice president from waiting until day 1 of their parties presidency, and then murdering the president? And then instantly pardoning themself?
You grossly oversimplified what the Supreme Court basically “said,” and then posited a ridiculous assertion on top of it.
It works for the Klingons.
I’m sure analogous situations have come up many times in history, such as in the Roman empire. The Borgia clan in the Italian Renaissance got a possibly unjust reputation for stuff like that. Machiavelli’s “The Prince” was supposedly inspired by Cesare Borgia.
Part of the answer has been to be careful who you pick as VP. Trump picked Pence partly because Pence (at the time) seemed to have no presidential ambitions. It worked reasonably well, since Pence could have (politically) put the shiv into Trump during either of Trump’s two impeachments. If Trump becomes president again, he’ll likely get impeached at least a couple more times, so we’ll see if Vance is similarly loyal.
I had the same question about the Prince of Wales and the King
Well, logically the immunity would also cover the vice president, as the stated argument for immunity was that a president should be able to act without having to clear everything with a lawyer. Logically, a vice president should then also have the same immunity.
So I guess murdering the president to take their job simply has to be done while shouting “This is an official act of the office of the vice president!” as a battle cry.
That logic doesn’t work because the official duties of the VP are both narrow and distinct from the President. Its not obvious that legal powers confer from the President to the Vice President in any way except under predefined circumstances. The VP would need to wait until those circumstances occurred, for example if the President was sedated for a medical procedure, and then do the official act while they have the actual powers of the Presidency behind them.
Well, let’s wait and see when it happens. There’s a first time for everything.
The president Can’t be held accountable is one thing. The vp as far as I know (if the vp killed the president) would need certain people in the cabinet to make him president. They’d have to sign off on it.
But of they signed off on it then really at this point nothing stops it
