The Madness of King Donald. The 25th Amendment Watch List, Fifth Edition. He's not okay.

 

October 1, 2025

Trump's dementia is clearly accelerating, as his weird speech to assembled senior military officers demonstrated.

In response to the speeches assertion that cities like Chicago should be used as training grounds, Gov. JB Pritzker called for Trump to be removed from office under the 25th Amendment.

I've been saying that for months.

The Atlantic noted:

The president talked at length, and his comments should have confirmed to even the most sympathetic observer that he is, as the kids say, not okay. Several of Hegseth’s people said in advance of the senior-officer conclave that its goal was to energize America’s top military leaders and get them to focus on Hegseth’s vision for a new Department of War. But the generals and admirals should be forgiven if they walked out of the auditorium and wondered: What on earth is wrong with the commander in chief?

Trump seemed quieter and more confused than usual; he is not accustomed to audiences who do not clap and react to obvious applause lines. “I’ve never walked into a room so silent before,” he said at the outset. (Hegseth had the same awkward problem earlier, waiting for laughs and applause that never came.) The president announced his participation only days ago, and he certainly seemed unprepared.

I've also been stating that he's not okay. 

It's now becoming undeniable even where it had been ignored. Donald Trump is not okay.

October 2, 2025

A growing momentum on Trump's insanity.

This is huge.

In this clip, an off mike Speaker of the House Mike Johnson basically admits that Trump is "unwell", and only defends it by saying that some Democrats are as well.

He doesn't defined Trump's insanity, and he claims not to have seen the speech to the Military.

There's growing momentum now for the 25th Amendment to be invoked.  It's openly being called for, and here one of Trump's closest allies doesn't try to defend his sanity at all.

MADELEINE DEAN: The president is unhinged. He is unwell. 

MIKE JOHNSON: A lot of folks on your side are too

DEAN: Oh my god, please. That performance in front of the generals?

MIKE JOHNSON: I didn't see it

DEAN: It's so dangerous! Our allies are looking elsewhere. Our enemies are laughing. You have a president who is unwell.

Things like this have a way of happening suddenly.  Since Trump's very publized speech to the senior officers, there has been a lot of public commentary on his being "unwell" and now senior politicians are saying so openly. Some are Democrats who aren't afraid of saying it, even though they've been reluctant to up until now, such as Madelene Dean.

Dean:   “Is it racist? You put a sombrero on a Black man who’s the leader of the House. You don’t see that as racist? We need you desperately to lead,” 

Johnson:  “I’m working on it. And personally, it’s not my style. I love you and I respect you, OK?”

Dean:  “That’s why I’m talking to you".

We covered this quite a while back, but the 25th Amendment requires the vice president, together with a "majority of either the principal officers of the executive departments or of such other body as Congress may by law provide", to issue a written declaration that the president is unable to discharge his duties.  So who all has to buy in on that?  The majority of the cabinet, but just a simple majority.

Who all is in the cabinet?

Secretary of State Marco Rubio

Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent

Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth

Attorney General Pam Bondi

Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum

Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins

Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick

Secretary of Labor Lori Chavez-DeRemer

Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Scott Turner

Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy

Secretary of Energy Chris Wright

Secretary of Education Linda McMahon

Secretary of Veterans Affairs Doug Collins

Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem

Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency Lee Zeldin

Director of the Office of Management and Budget Russell Vought

Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard

Director of the Central Intelligence Agency John Ratcliffe

United States Trade Representative Jamieson Greer

Administrator of the Small Business Administration Kelly Loeffler

Chief of Staff Susie Wiles

Okay, let's make some reasonable assumptions.

Getting J.D. Vance on board only really requires that a majority of the cabinet go along.  I suspect Vance would be pretty willing to stab Trump in the back if it elevates him to the Oval Office, and as I've said here all along, the NatCons have been planning on this development since day one.

So who might go along?  Keep in mind that there are a whopping 22 cabinet officers (an absurd amount).  In order to invoke the 25th Amendment, 12 would need to be willing to vote that Trump is bonkers.

Let's put them in "probable" (red), no way (blue) and unknown categories (orange) and see where that takes us, keeping in mind that unknown, is unknown to me.  Others might have a pretty good idea of how everyone is likely to go.

1.  Secretary of State Marco Rubio. Rubio would definitely remove Trump and is undoubtedly willing to save his own career rather than be hitched to a mentally declining unpopular President.

2. Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent.  Bessent might seem like a surprise here, but he's been clearly uncomfortable saying the stupidest stuff and would likely like to be relieved of that burden.

1.  Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth.  Hegseth is hitched to Trump's wagon, and knows it. The only way he might consider otherwise is an open threat/promise that if he goes along, he keeps his job (the NatCons probably like him), but if he doesn't, when this gets worse, he'll be sent packing before his work is done.

3.  Attorney General Pam Bondi.  This probably seems like a surprise too, but recently Trump's been forcing Bondi into clearly unethical and stupid positions.  She's pretty smart, and would likely vote to save herself.

4.  Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum.  Burgum's role in the administration is a self serving marriage of convenience.  He'd hitch his wagon to any Republican President.

2.  Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins. I don't know much about Rollins and probably should put her in orange, but she served Texas Governor Perry, which speaks for itself.

3.  Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick.  Lutnick has come across as a complete Trump toady and likely knows that if Trump falls, he's going to be sent packing.

1.  Secretary of Labor Lori Chavez-DeRemer.  Chavez-DeRemer has really flown under the wire, but she seems pretty sharp.  She's Hispanic, and her father was a Teamster.  I suspect that she'd lean towards removal as she's drawn little attention and would continue to draw little attention in a new administration.

4.  Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr..  This one speaks for itself.

2. Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Scott Turner.  Turner's an unknown.  His political career has been tied to Trump, but whether he's so loyal that he'll go down with Trump is another question.

3. Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy No idea whatsoever, but I suspect he would not go along.

5. Secretary of Energy Chris Wright Wright's weltanschauung in his department is too aligned with Trump for him to go along.

6. Secretary of Education Linda McMahon Speaks for itself.

5.  Secretary of Veterans Affairs Doug Collins Collins served as an active duty and reserve chaplain.  He's very conservative, but I suspect that military officers have his ear.

6.  Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem.  Noem is from the far right, but she's savvy and she's not going to go down with the Trump ship.

7. Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency Lee Zeldin.  Zeldin is a Trump ally. He won't vote to remove Trump.

7.  Director of the Office of Management and Budget Russell Vought.  Vought is a far right NatCon and pretty smart, which puts him in the cynical camp.  Trump's only a vehicle for the NatCons, and he'll be willing to change lines if it means it keeps the NatCons in control under a NatCon Vance.  Indeed, his participation would nearly guaranty that it would.

8.  Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard.  Gabbard has a demonstrated independent streak and has been in both political parties.  She'll act to advance and save herself.

4. Director of the Central Intelligence Agency John Ratcliffe.  Quite unknown, but I suspect would lean towards removal.

5. United States Trade Representative Jamieson Greer.  Unknown, but would likely lean towards removal.

6. Administrator of the Small Business Administration Kelly Loeffler.  Unknown, but would likely lean towards removal.

7.  Chief of Staff Susie Wiles Probably loyal to Trump.

So, if my math and ponderings are correct, which they may very well not be, things are probably nearly tied, in knowns, right now.  I figure there are 8 out of the needed 12 who would remove Trump, if four more signed on.

Of the unknowns, there are seven. Of the diehard Trump loyalist, seven.  I figure five of the unknowns, one more than needed, would likely go for removal, but that's a pretty thin margin.  Some on the fence would likely want a greater margin.

You can bet these conversations are going on right now, however.  They are openly going on now in Congress.

October 5, 2025

Don is using the budget shutdown to cozy up to Project 2025, making his removal less likely as the NatCons will get what the want from the document under the cover of the budget shutdown. Russell Vought, for example, can now be moved to the no removal column.

It was a crafty move on somebody's part.

October 15, 2025

I'd love to go to Argentina. I'd like to be like Biden. I'd like to go to the beach. My legs are not quite as thin as his. My legs are slightly heavier…My body is a little bit larger than his. I'm not sure it would be appreciated on the beach.

Donald Trump.

October 20, 2025

The destruction of the facade of the East Wing of the White House began today in anticipation of the construction of a ballroom that will never get built.

Construction of the gaudy structure will advance until the 25th Amendment or advanced old age remove Trump from office, at which point the East Wing will have to be repaired on the taxpayers dime. Worst case scenario is that Trump somehow managed to babble through a full term, which would be a disaster for the nation, after which the structure will be taken down and a new East Wing built.

October 21, 2025

So I just wanna say, thank you all. Uh, simply, behind me, so, is a knockout panel. This panel, the next time you come here, will be opened up and gone. No – uh, no problem with any of the surrounding areas. These, this room will be fixed. This will be like a cocktail – the whole floor will be cocktails or pre-briefings or whatever it may be, lots of different things. So the entire floor. So you come in, the entire floor sets up. We didn’t have to do any of that. Usually, you have to do that. You need different rooms to go along with a ballroom.

Donald Trump.

October 22, 2025

Trump now claims the justice department owes  him $230M dollars.

He's clearly insane.

October 24, 2025

October 24, 2025

cont:

Oh yeah. . .that's clearly the reaction a totally stable secure genius would have . . . 

Thank you for your attention to this matter.

And with that petulant temper tantrum, we'll close out this edition.

October 30, 2025

The United States, with a demented child in the Oval Office, is going to resume the testing of nuclear weapons.

Trump  is clearly, to use the legal standard, "a danger to himself or others".  

Apply the 25th Amendment.

Well that's embarrassing.

Trump was clearly clueless and walked right when the Japanese Prime Minister stopped to review the honor guard, leaving her to have to catch up.  People guided Trump around like a demented elderly person. . . which of course he is.

And the saluting.

Ronald Reagan started saluting at U.S troops.  It's moronic.  It was then, and it still is. Trump's a civilian, he shouldn't be saluting anyone.

November 4, 2025

Donald Trump pardoned  Changpeng Zhao without knowing who he was.

This from the guy who complains about autopens.

November 5, 2025

You go to a grocery store, you have to give ID. You go to a gas station, you give ID. But for voting they want no voter ID. It's only for one reason: because they cheat.

I don't have to show an ID at the grocery store or the gas station.  And I don't believe Trump ever goes to the grocery store or the gas station.

Cont:

1300% lower than last year. We love the creamed corn. I don’t know who came up with that. Bob Corn, or maybe Jack Cream. Hey look, a woman from Saudi Arabia!

Trump on creamed corn. 

I don't know if they care about that in Saudi Arabia, but here it means a lot. We got the princess here from Saudi Arabia. She's got a lot of cash.

Trump on the cost of a Thanksgiving meal.

November 7, 2025

Our energy costs are way down. Our groceries are way down. Everything is way down. And the press does not report it… Thanksgiving meals 25% down. So I don't want to hear about the affordability.

Trump.

November 11, 2025

Office Hours: Trump's mental decline appears to be accelerating. So why isn’t the media reporting on it?

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Friday, October 23, 1925. Stray dog, beer and Billy Mitchell.

Dog: 

Whatever It Is, I’m Against It: Today -100: October 23, 1925: Of invasions, discre...: War of the Stray Dog News: Greece invades Bulgaria, occupying posts and shelling villages (well, at least one village). Greece, claiming Bu...

Billy Mitchell's troubles hit the front page. 

Beer in Chicago did as well.

Delegates to a Congregationalist convention posed for a photograph.

Last edition:

Thursday, October 22, 1925: Follyology?

Labels: 1920s, 1925, Blog Mirror, Bulgaria, Greece, John Singer Sargent, Monarchy, pornography, Whatever It Is I'm against it

Blog Mirror: In Anti-Catholic Crusade, Trump's ICE Targets Holy Mass in Chicago

 

In Anti-Catholic Crusade, Trump's ICE Targets Holy Mass in Chicago

What an Anti American Idiot.

 

Oh, the irony.  Trump portrays himself as war loving buffoon Lt. Colonel Kilgore from Apocalypse Now, an anti war movie depicting the American military as inept and which itself is about a war that Trump's shin splints kept him out of, and which the US lost.

Heart of Darkness indeed.

Wednesday, July 8, 1925. Riffian assault.

Riffians launched an offensive against Fes.

Ralph Samuelson became the first person to perform a ski jump on water.

Antonio Genna of the Genna crime family became the third member of the Genna brothers to be shot to death in less than two months in the ongoing war with Capone's North Side Gang.

Pioneering photographer Clarence Hudson White of the Photo-Secession movement died.  He photographed dreamy female portraits, including nudes which debatably crossed into pornography, emphasizing, perhaps, an ongoing and developing problem in the age of film.

Last edition:

Thursday, July 2, 1925. Nikolai Goitsyn executed.

Labels: 1920s, 1925, Communism, Monarchy, Russia, USSR

Monday, January 12, 1925. Ordering Thompsons.

The North Side Gang attempted a drive by assassination of Al Capone, with the would be killers armed with Thompson submachine guns.

Capone was inside a nearby restaurant at the time, conducting business, and only his bodyguard was wounded. The event did cause him to order Thompsons himself, which were not restricted from purchase in any fashion at the time.

These would have been the M1921 Thompson, not the M1928 Thompson that is more familiar to most people, although telling the difference between the two at a glance is difficult.  They were extremely expensive.

Period Thompson advertisement.  Thompson marketed them to police and for self defense, but of course at the price, they weren't economically attractive to regular people, and they were to criminal organizations, as well as to the police.

Last edition:

Sunday, January 11, 1925. Jargon of the Juveniles, Times Signal, Zanesville.

Labels: 1920s, 1925, Teenagers, The Roaring Twenties, the spoken word

Monday, November 10, 1924. Henry Cabot Lodge passes.

He was a giant of American politics.

The Tientsin Conference opened in China between warlords Zhang Zuolin, Feng Yuxiang, and Lu Yongxiang.   Former president Sun Yat-sen, the ongoing head of the Kuomintang and the government sitting in Canton, organized the meeting to discuss the ongoing civil war.

Ranch property belonging to Mexican president elect Plutarco Elías Calles was expropriated by the state in accordance with Mexican agrarian laws.

Chicago mobster Dean O'Banion, leader of Chicago's North Side Gang, was gunned down in his florist shop, making the cover of The Casper Herald.  His murder was nearly inevitable as he'd grown crosswise with one of the Italian mob families in Chicago.

Last edition:

Saturday, November 8, 1924. Declaration from Honolulu.

Labels: 1920s, 1924, Honolulu Hawaii, Japanese Empire, Korea, Syngman Rhee

Monday, February 11, 1924. Booting Denby

The Senate began to move against Secretary of the Navy Edwin Denby.

The vote was 47 to 34 to remove Denby, which would actually be something that Coolidge, not Congress, could do.

The Negro Sanhedrin, an attempt by the City of Chicago to have an all race congress to address racial issues, convened with representatives of trade unions, civic groups and fraternal organizations. The specific goal was to devise a program to protect the rights of African American tenant farmers.

Sunday, October 17, 1943. The Burma Railway completed.

The German surface raider Michel was torpedoed and sunk off of Japan by the USS Tarpon.  On the same day the German's lost the U-540, U-631 and U-841 in the Atlantic.

The Burma Railway, constructed with Asian slave labor and Allied POWs, was completed.

Tamils working on the bridge.

The railway may be best remembered today due to the fairly inaccurate movie, The Bridge On the River Kwai, which is nonetheless a great movie.

POW illustration of the construction of Bridge 227 across the Kwai.

A second concrete bridge replaced the original wooden bridge shortly after its construction. It was destroyed by the RAF in February 1945.  Shortly after the war, most of the original railway was dismantled and only the original 81 miles remains in use.

The Third Moscow Conference begins.

It would begin to work on the post-war world.

Chicago began running its subway for the first time.

Saturday, Sepember 22, 1923. Henning Hotel Robbed.

A major raid in Chicago on speakeasies resulted in the jails being filled to capacity.

Crime was a major story in Casper as well:

And the Governor of Oklahoma caught a dragon.

The Navy's ZR-1 dirigible flew over Washington, D. C.

Sunday, April 22, 1923. Agrarian rise.

The British commenced their occupation of Rawandiz, in Iraqi Kurdistan. The Kurdish city is near the Turkish and Iranian borders.  The United Kingdom was occupying the country under a League of Nations Mandate.  The border was contested by the Turks, who had occupied the city only a year prior, which motivated the British to garrison the town.

The Bulgarian Agrarian National Union won the vast majority of the seats of the country's Parliament.  The agrarian party is the only such party to come to power by a majority of votes being cast for it outright.

The party was a founding member of the International Agrarian Bureau and part of a strong rising agrarian movement in Eastern Europe. The movement would eventually spread to Western Europe as well, but the rise of Communism and World War Two would effectively destroy it and its influence waned. The Bureau dissolved in 1971.

The Italian fascists cut 1B lire from the country's budget by cutting civil service jobs, leaving the deficit in the budget at 3B for that year.

A bomb exploded at Comiskey Park in Chicago, but didn't injure anyone.  Nobody was arrested from the explosion, but it was suspected that it was the result of the hiring of non-union labor to point the exterior of the ballpark.  

I don't know if it's related, but owner Charles Comiskey was notoriously cheap.

"Queen of the Pinups" Bettie Page was born on this day in 1923.  Page was a good student, but from a broken home.  After several attempts to get her feet on the ground she turned to modeling in her late 20s and rapidly became, by the early 1950s an infamous pornographic model and actress and one of the few individuals in that line of work whose name was well known.  In 1958, she experienced a radical conversion to Christianity, stopped her pornographic career, and devoted the rest of her life to her conversion, although she ended up marrying and divorcing three times in her life. Her divorces prevented her from being accepted in a new desired career of Christian missionary to Africa.  She was subpoenaed to testify in front of a Congressional committee at the time investigating the pornography industry at a time when there still remained sufficient public will to attempt to do something about it, an era that has now very much faded.

In making her switch, she dropped out of the public eye but oddly was subject to a large scale revival in interest in the 1980s, which is the only reason I've heard of her.  She was the subject of a major biography at the time, and I can recall reading a detailed review of it in The New Republic, which used to have fantastic book reviews.  In the intervening thirty years, all sorts of rumors had spring up about her, even though she remained alive at the time.  About as much as can reasonably be said is that she struggled with her mental health and had abandoned the life that brought her to a certain section of the public eye.  She shares that trait with many in the industry, including many Playboy models, which in fact she was one of.

Dying in 2008, Page is a sad tale of a very smart person whose early life slid into vice with grotesque and tragic results, but also one of recovery and redemption, if not full recovery.  It's interesting that the public focus was on her only when she was deep into depravity, and then again late in life when a pornified culture wanted to focus on her earlier image.

Of some interest, Page and Marilyn Monroe took the same path, at almost the same time, although Monroe's turn to modeling, including nude modeling, happened at a significantly earlier age.  Both women were the products of broken homes, although Monroe's was significantly more broken.  Monroe, moreover, was just a teenager when she was first a true model, and it was not until the late 1940s that she was photographed nude.  Ironically, Monroe was able to start a career in acting before the news of her nude photographs broke, and while she was Playboy's first (unwilling) model, she was able to escape the immediate implications of it due to the intervention of Life magazine, which ran the same photographs before Playboy as glamour photos in order to save her career.  Page, in contrast, began a rapid descent after first consenting to be photographed.  They were almost bookends in a certain story in the evolution of American morality and the portrayal of women.  Neither of them was able to really able to escape their early story, although Page certainly lived a much longer life.

Both of them would suggest that something about the Second World War and the culture that followed, including the release of false "studies" that the public was apparently willing to accept at the time had an impact on the culture, assuming that the war was merely conicidental in this story. That seems unlikely.

August 31, 1919. The Motor Transport Convoy gets a day of rest, no rest in Kiev, turmoil in Chicago

Railroad station, Carson City, 1940.  It likely didn't look much different in 1919.  The man is waiting for the mail, which was moved by train at the time.

On this day in 1919, the Sunday day of rest returned to the command.

It darned near had to. The command was behind, by several days, in its original anticipated schedule, but it had taken it 20 hours across the dust and muck of the Nevada desert to travel the stretch before Carson City, and this on a road that was theoretically a designated highway, although the designation at that time was just that, a designation.  Very little of the Lincoln Highway, as we've seen, was improved in any fashion whatsoever.  There had been problems with teh road the entire way, but after the column hit Nebraska the road became worse with each mile, with Utah's and Nevada's roads being particularly bad.

Speed, of course, in the era was relative. . . .

The command was provided "Union religious services".  I have no idea what that actually means.  General ecumenical perhaps?  Non protestant soldiers with Sunday obligations, which at this time would have largely been Catholics, but perhaps some Greek Orthodox, would have had to hike into town to see what was available for them.

And there was transportation to Hot Springs for bathing, which was no doubt welcome.

And some worked, including the operator of a tractor.

Emblem of the former Socialist Party of America

Meanwhile, in Chicago, a city the convoy  had passed through some weeks earlier, day two of the Socialist Party of America's Emergency National Convention saw the bolting left wing of the party.  The English speaking bolters, on this day, formed the Communist Labor Party in its own convention.

This was addressed a bit yesterday when it was related that the emergency was the rise of a radical, or rather more radical, left wing of the party that was hearing the siren song of Communism.  In this, the US Socialist Party was going through the same struggle that Socialist parties everywhere were.  Nearly all of them had started out as hardcore radical parties, but over the years as their fortunes had risen, their positions became less radical as they moved towards accepting democratic forms of government.  Ironically, World War One, during which it had been supposed that Socialist would take the position that all worker should be united in opposing the war in favor of the solidarity of labor, in fact saw the opposite development and the movement of mainstream Socialist towards accepting representative democracy.  At the same time, all the same parties saw movements within them that were extremely radical.  As this process occurred, these parties split.  In Russia, the split saw the rise of four different Socialist parties, with the Communist Party being the most radical.  Germany saw a succession of splinter parties that eventually saw two parties, the Social Democratic Party and the Communist Party emerge.

In the U.S. the Russian Revolution gave rise to the Communist Party of America in May, 1919.  The Socialist Party continued on but radical elements within it were attracted to Communism. The Emergency National Convention was called to address this, and to put an end to it.  By that point, however, the right wing Socialist were a minority in the party.  While they seized control of the convention, they could not keep the left wing from walking out, which it did and on this day, in their own convention, the English speaking radicals formed the Communist Labor Party.  Ironically, the Emergency Session had come about due to the left wing demanding that it occur in order to move the Socialist Party towards Communism.

The Communist Labor Party was not to be long lived as it merged with the Communist Party of America the following year, which then became the Communist Party of the USA.  The Socialist Party of the USA would continue on, with various swings and splinters, until 1972 when it changed its name to the Social Democrats, USA, reflecting the evolution of the party.  Ironically, the Social Democrats have not seemed to really benefit from the current flirtation in some circles in the US with social democracy.  The Communist Party USA still exists as well, with its high water mark really having come during the 1930s.

Elsewhere, the fights brought by Communism saw dramatic events take place in Ukraine where the Whites entered the city, taking it without a fight from the Reds during the Russian Civil War but ending up fighting, slightly, forces of the Ukrainian People's Republic that entered the town simultaneously.

Russian White victory parade on this date in 1919 in Kiev.

The entire event in some ways is emblematic of the confusing nature of the Russian Civil War.

The Ukrainian People's Republic was an Ukrainian effort to create an independent government for the region following the collapse of the Russian Empire and the withdraw of the Germans from the region.  During that period various forces contested for control of the new country with a directorate emerging that had the most support. At the same time, the country found itself facing a Soviet invasion in January 1919 and it also found itself at war with Poland to its west.  To compound matters, White Russian forces contested with the Red Army for control of the region, and Ukrainian Greens sought to bring anarchy to the country, fielding an army of their own.

Under these conditions the independence of Ukraine was unlikely to occur but the region did manage to survive surprisingly long.  On this day the re emergent Whites took Kiev but the Ukrainian government sought to as well, not appreciating the ability of the Whites to move as quickly as they did.  The Whites retained control of the city.  The Ukrainian People's Republic effectively came to an end in 1921 with its territory divided between the Soviet Union and Poland, although it would amazingly maintain a government in exile up until the country was able to form its own government again following the collapse of the Soviet Union.