Former White House press secretary Jen Psaki broke with more than 50 Democratic lawmakers on Thursday, calling their campaign to invoke the 25th Amendment against President Donald Trump a dead end and urging her party to stop "screaming about every single thing" that comes out of the administration.

Psaki, now the host of MSNBC's "MS NOW," made the remarks during an appearance on Stephen A. Smith's show "Straight Shooter." Smith had asked her whether the left's posture had become so "fervently against the other side" that it struck ordinary people as "vitriolic." Her answer was unusually blunt for a cable-news host whose network has built its brand on opposition to the Trump White House.

The exchange comes as Fox News reported that more than 50 Democratic lawmakers have formally called on Trump's Cabinet to effectively depose him under the 25th Amendment, arguing the president is unfit to serve over his comments and actions regarding Iran. Those demands followed a social media declaration in which Trump warned that a "whole civilization will die" unless the Iranian government agreed to reopen the Strait of Hormuz.

Psaki's message: it's not going to happen

Psaki did not mince words about the constitutional gambit her fellow Democrats are pursuing. She told Smith:

"I mean, you've talked about the 25th Amendment. I have no issue with people saying they're for invoking the 25th Amendment, but it's not going to happen. So, it's like why are we spending so much time, you know?"

That assessment is correct on the merits. The 25th Amendment requires the vice president and a majority of the Cabinet to declare the president unable to discharge his duties. No serious observer has suggested Vice President J.D. Vance or any sitting Cabinet member would join such an effort. The push is, at best, a messaging exercise, and Psaki seemed to recognize it as one that carries diminishing returns.

She went further, questioning the broader tone of the Democratic opposition. Psaki said she was "outraged by a lot of" what the Trump administration has done, but added a caveat that will not sit well with her party's activist base:

"And part of that goes hand-in-hand with like you have to scream at the top of your lungs about everything that comes out of the Trump administration. And I'm outraged by a lot of it. But I don't think screaming about every single thing is the most constructive thing."

For a host on a network that has made wall-to-wall Trump opposition its editorial identity, the concession is notable. It mirrors a growing, if still quiet, debate inside the Democratic Party about whether the resistance posture that dominated 2017 through 2020 still works, or whether it has become self-defeating.

Democrats press ahead anyway

Not all Democrats share Psaki's restraint. Sen. Andy Kim, D-N.J., has been among the most vocal voices demanding Trump's removal. Kim stated plainly:

"I certainly think the president should be removed. I mean, he's unfit for office. I think the 25th Amendment, and if not, then impeachment."

Kim, who has previously dodged questions about his own party's leadership future, now wants to leapfrog all internal Democratic debates and skip straight to removing a sitting president whose Cabinet has shown no appetite for doing so. It is a position that generates headlines but produces no governing leverage.

Fox News noted that calls for the 25th Amendment have also come from other Trump critics, including former GOP lawmaker Marjorie Taylor Greene, though the report did not detail Greene's specific role in the effort.

The Iran-related trigger for the latest round of removal talk centers on Trump's social media warning about the Strait of Hormuz. Democrats seized on the language to argue the president poses a danger. But the Senate recently defeated a Democratic effort to restrict Trump's authority on Iran, with even some members of their own caucus breaking ranks, a sign that the party's maximalist posture on this issue lacks the votes to match its volume.

A party struggling with its own tent

Psaki's most revealing comments had less to do with Trump and more to do with the internal culture of the Democratic Party. She told Smith that winning requires inviting "more people to the party" and accepting that not every member will agree on every issue.

"So, if you want to win, you have to accept sometimes that there may be people who are part of your party or you're going to welcome into the event or the conversation who you don't agree with on 100% of issues. And I think sometimes there can be a little litmus-testy feeling about like who's allowed to be a Democrat or who can consider themselves progressive."

That is a remarkable admission from someone who served as the face of the Biden White House's communications operation. The "litmus-testy feeling" she described is not a fringe complaint. It is a structural problem that has driven away donors, elected officials, and voters who once considered themselves part of the Democratic coalition. Some prominent figures aligned with the party have walked away entirely, citing exactly the kind of ideological rigidity Psaki now laments.

The former press secretary also acknowledged that Democrats sometimes adopt a posture where they feel obligated to "scream at the top of your lungs about everything that comes out of the Trump administration." She called the instinct understandable but counterproductive, a rare concession that permanent outrage may be costing her side more than it costs the president.

The pattern behind the noise

Psaki's intervention fits a broader pattern. Since Trump's return to office, a faction of Democratic lawmakers has cycled through one escalation after another, from protest stunts on the House floor to profanity-laced displays at party conventions. Rep. Al Green was ejected from Trump's State of the Union address for a sign protest. Former Rep. Katie Porter waved a profane anti-Trump sign at the California Democratic convention. Each episode generated cable-news chatter and social-media applause from the base. None moved a single policy needle.

The 25th Amendment push follows the same playbook. More than 50 House Democrats signed onto a demand they know will never be fulfilled. The vice president will not comply. The Cabinet will not comply. The effort exists to signal outrage, not to govern.

Psaki, to her credit, said so out loud. Whether her party listens is another question. The incentives in Democratic politics right now reward volume over strategy, performance over persuasion. The very "litmus-testy" culture Psaki described makes it risky for elected Democrats to say what she said, that the screaming is not working.

Smith's question about vitriol cut to the heart of the problem. When every Trump statement becomes grounds for removal, when every policy dispute becomes a constitutional crisis, the public stops listening. The boy who cried "25th Amendment" eventually finds that nobody outside his own echo chamber takes the alarm seriously.

Psaki seems to understand that. Whether the 50-plus lawmakers who signed their names to this latest demand understand it is far less clear.

When the opposition party's own cable-news allies have to tell them to calm down, the problem is not the president. It is the strategy.