Chris Spyrou

Absolutely.

I mean, what you would sort of imagine is that that would take place probably at the White House as quickly as possible.

We have had actually a fair number of U.S.

presidents die from one cause or another across U.S.

history.

In every instance, power has transferred to the vice president and they have taken those oaths of office sort of wherever they happened to be at the time.

Socially, what are the implications of that?

I mean, in Australia, we vote for the party, not the prime minister, whereas in the States, you know, Donald Trump and J.D.

Vance's names are on the ticket when people go to vote.

If someone other than President Donald Trump or J.D.

Vance were to step into this role in the event of something catastrophic happening, what do you think the social implications of that would be given the fragile state of things and democracy in the States at the moment?

So this is, again, one of the complications of the system that the 25th Amendment set up here in the United States, which is there is no guarantee that the Speaker of the House or the president pro tem of the Senate are of the president's party.

Right now, Republicans are in charge of both of those houses of Congress, so it wouldn't be operative in this case in this moment.

But, you know, one of the things that the Democratic Congress really worried about in Richard Nixon's presidency was,

was that they had forced out Richard Nixon's vice president and Democrats were in charge of Congress.

And so there was a fear that if they moved ahead with impeaching Richard Nixon while the vice presidency was empty, then actually the Democratic Speaker of the House would be the next one to ascend to the presidency and you would have the presidency flip parties.

And it could be seen as a partisan maneuver

to basically stage a coup and remove the president's governing party from office.

Now, before we let you go, it's not lost on anyone that this is the third alleged assassination attempt on Donald Trump's life in two years, in under two years.

We did see some changes after the first assassination attempt.