Showtime’s Homeland has made no mistake about using the Trump Administration as a heavy influence in how Season 6 has unfolded. The political drama saw its president, paranoid by Russian interference in the U.S. government, fire a third of her cabinet — resulting in Congress moving to force her from office.
In an episode titled Clarity, Homeland invokes the 25th Amendment, the constitutional provision which allows for the removal of the president from office for reasons of death, resignation, or incapacitation.
According to Newsbusters’ Lindsay Kornick:
The April 15 episode “Clarity” comes after a continuous investigation into Russian interference within the nation, which likely includes a member of Congress. Because President Elizabeth Keane (Elizabeth Marvel) is becoming more and more paranoid in silencing her opposition, some members of Congress and even her own Cabinet begin drafting an invocation of the 25th Amendment to officially take her out of power.
In her paranoid state, Keane worsens her image by planning to fire almost a third of her Cabinet for being disloyal to her in a move her advisors call constitutional but “unprecedented,” mirroring the media’s reactions to Trump’s actions with his Cabinet.
From this conflict, Keane’s vice president Warner (Beau Bridges) meets with her saying he won’t sign the 25th Amendment document if she restrains her behavior.
It’s not lost on some critics that in the age of Time’s Up, Homeland has chosen to saddle the country’s first female president with the 25th Amendment.
Hollywood using the 25th amendment to oust presidents with similar career arcs to Trump is not exactly a new thing. In fact, it happened more than once on Sunday alone.
As Kornick writes: “This isn’t even the first show this year to depict the use of the 25thAmendment to oust a democratically-elected president, it wasn’t even the first show of the day to have fantasies of removing Trump from office. Hollywood seems to believe that if it can repeat an idea long enough, it will come true in real life. Trump Derangement Syndrome has grown so unstable that it’s hard for them to deal with reality, they have to make things up in their little progressive bubble. It must be torturous being a liberal.”
Follow Dylan Gwinn on Twitter @themightygwinn