Chris Spyrou

Let's say we woke up tomorrow to news that Trump had been killed.

What does that first hour behind the scenes actually look like?

So under the US presidential system of succession, the presidency automatically passes to the next survivor in the line of presidential succession.

In normal circumstances, that would be Vice President J.D.

Vance, who

would sort of symbolically take the oath of office, but under the Constitution, the power actually automatically transfers to him at the time of the death of the president.

The challenge of the presidential line of succession is that after the president and vice president, the next person in the line of succession is actually the speaker of the House of Representatives and then followed by the president pro tem of the U.S.

Senate.

And then it's all of the U.S.

cabinet officials in descending order of when their departments were actually created by Congress.

So it actually has nothing to do with the –

theoretical importance of one cabinet versus another.

So in fact, you actually have the Secretary of Agriculture much higher in that presidential line of succession than the Secretary of Homeland Security.

So what we know from this weekend is that actually the highest ranking person who

who was in the presidential line of succession, who was not attending the White House Correspondents' Dinner where that incident occurred, was the president pro tem of the U.S.

Senate, Senator Chuck Grassley from Iowa.

So the president pro tem is actually the oldest, longest-ranking, longest-serving U.S.

senator of the majority party

So in many cases, that president pro tem is not someone who is particularly spry, particularly with it, or even all that politically important in the U.S.

system by the time they reach that president pro tem status.