WASHINGTON, Jan 12: Vice-President Mike Pence on Tuesday rejected Democrats' demand to invoke the 25th Amendment and remove President Donald Trump for fomenting the Capitol rampage of last Wednesday.

Preempting the passage of a resolution by the House of Representatives seeking Trump's removal by the Cabinet, just hours before it was to be put to vote, Pence wrote to Speaker Nancy Pelosi, "With just eight days left in the President's term, you and the Democratic caucus are demanding that the Cabinet and I invoke the 25th Amendment. I don't believe such a course of action is in the best interest of our nation or consistent with our Constitution."

Pence, erroneously, said the 25th Amendment is not a "means of punishment for usurpation" and not to "address presidential incapacity or disability." "I will not yield to efforts in the House of Representatives to play political game at a time so serious in the life of our nation," he added.

However, it is prominently written in the Constitution that if a majority of Cabinet members judge that a President is "mentally" unsound, the Vice-President must take over. A President inciting violence upon electoral defeat and repeating every day for the last two months that he has won the election and his votes were "stolen" is widely believed to be mentally unsound. Pelosi called Trump "unhinged." Several leading Republicans in his camp have deserted him and three Cabinet members and over a dozen White House officials have resigned in response to his bizarre behaviour.