Donald Trump has professed a preference for “acting” heads of departments in his administration.

“I like acting. It gives me more flexibility,” Trump told reporters in January as he headed to Camp David. “Do you understand that? I like acting. So we have a few that are acting. We have a great, great Cabinet.”

The assumption has always been that the president’s impulsive nature drives that preference.

Here is an alternative suggestion: maybe it’s all about Article 25.

It is unlikely that Trump has actually read the Constitution, and even less likely that he has had it explained to him by someone qualified to do so; but I would guess that he has at least gleaned the essentials about the two ways by which he might be ejected from office: impeachment and the 25th amendment, which provides that

“Whenever the Vice President and a majority of either the principal officers of the executive departments or of such other body as Congress may by law provide, transmit to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives their written declaration that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, the Vice President shall immediately assume the powers and duties of the office as Acting President.”

Among his other endearing traits, Donald Trump is a narcissistic paranoid. I would guarantee that he doesn’t trust his bloodless VP not to suddenly spring to life and lunge for the presidency when given half the chance.

Mike Pence would have to be a fool not to, given that the Trump presidency appears to have fatally wounded the GOP and Pence’s chance of ever successfully running for the office in the future.

The feral nature of Trump’s survival instincts would naturally compel him to look to blocking the other potential agents of his demise, his cabinet. He’s certainly seen a fair number of ex-trustees turn on him once they were released from his vice-grip.

We know how Trump’s fragmented logic tends to operate, knit together from half-truths and complete misunderstandings of the facts.

I suspect he is convinced that, if he manages to reduce the number of confirmed cabinet members sufficiently, there will never be enough people in his administration qualified to invoke the 25th amendment.

Doesn’t that sound exactly like the way his fevered mind works?

Crooked developers roll with “casual labor;” why shouldn’t the Cabinet of the United States of America?