People often criticise the Democrats for being overly cautious and never getting anything done. But this week they’ve surprised us all by unveiling concepts of a plan for getting Donald Trump out of the White House.

On Tuesday House Democrats introduced legislation that would create a commission to assess whether Trump is unfit to serve and should be removed under the 25th amendment. I don’t need to tell you what precipitated this: Trump is growingly increasingly erratic, threatening genocide one minute and posting pictures of himself as Jesus Christ the next.

Don’t get your hopes up, the bill is a long shot in a Republican-controlled Congress. Nevertheless, it’s still a positive development and demonstrates a growing appetite in Congress to talk about the president’s mental acuity. Or lack thereof.

While the legislation is a good start, I think it could go further. Why not require cognitive and psychological tests for everyone in government? Because it’s not just Trump who seems to be a little bit off his rocker, is it? The US is being run by a bunch of people with some very interesting ideas. And I use “interesting” in the British sense of the word.

Take, for example, Gregg Phillips, a top official at the Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema). Phillips has espoused election fraud conspiracy theories and said that “bitch” Joe Biden deserves to die, which isn’t particularly surprising for a Trump official. What is unusual, however, are his claims that he once involuntarily teleported to a Waffle House in Rome, Atlanta.

How exactly did that happen? He’s not sure. But Phillips did insinuate that the Waffle House hash brown bowls weren’t worth the journey. “Teleporting is no fun,” Phillips said in podcast remarks uncovered by CNN last month. “It’s no fun because you don’t really know what you’re doing. You don’t really understand it, it’s scary, but yet um … but so real.”

Is it really so real though? The New York Times interviewed staff and patrons at three Waffle House locations in Rome, and found that, on balance, the answer is probably “no.” No one was “aware of anyone traveling to the 24-hour restaurants by paranormal means”.

There clearly aren’t any teleportation machines tucked away in the Fema offices because, instead of going back in time and preventing Phillips from making these embarrassing remarks, an agency spokesperson has claimed the comments were taken out of context. They “represent personal, informal, jovial, and somewhat spiritual discussions made in the context of barely surviving cancer”, the spokesperson told CNN.

Phillips, meanwhile, has tried to provide some context, stating on Truth Social that he was undergoing alternative treatments for cancer and was “heavily medicated” when he discussed his unusual trip to Waffle House. “The word ‘teleportation’ was not mine,” he said. “It was used by someone else in the conversation reaching for language to describe something with no easy name. The more accurate biblical terms are ‘translated’ or ‘transported’.”

Phillips’s teleportation (or transportation) claims appear to be a little too much even for the Trump administration, who have reportedly asked him to stop posting about the matter. Even the president himself is befuddled. “What does teleport mean? Was he kidding?” Trump asked CNN last week when questioned about the statements.

If Phillips wants to keep his job I reckon he should drop all this teleportation business and start talking about aliens instead. I don’t know if it’s because they’re desperate for signs of intelligence life, but Republicans are obsessed with extraterrestrial activity. That includes JD Vance who, during a recent appearance on the Benny Show podcast, told conservative commentator Benny Johnson that he thought aliens were “demons”. He hasn’t “been able to spend enough time on this”, Vance continued, but he has developed some theories. “I think that celestial beings who fly around, who do weird things to people. I think that the desire to describe everything celestial, everything is otherworldly, to describe it as aliens,” Vance said. Maybe it was the alien-demons who took Phillips to Waffle House?

If it was, you can bet the Republicans are going to get to the bottom of it. Maga may not be fighting for universal healthcare or cheaper prices, but they are working very hard to get the Trump administration to reveal information about all these demons circling the Earth.

On Sunday, Tim Burchett, a Republican congressman from Tennessee, called on Trump to release government files on aliens. “[P]eel back the layers of that onion, let America decide if we can handle it,” Burchett urged. “I think we can handle it.”

Can we though? Because there seems to be some very troubling stuff going on. In a recent podcast episode, former Republican congressman Matt Gaetz, who was briefly Trump’s pick for US attorney general, claimed that he had been briefed on a secret alien-human hybrid breeding programme when he was in office. And Burchett himself once announced on Fox News that the aliens have technology that could turn humans “into a charcoal briquette”.

The aliens may have advanced tech, but you know what they (probably) don’t have? Diet soda. While a lot of people have wondered how on earth Trump is so healthy considering his junk food diet, it looks like we learned the answer this week. According to comments by Mehmet Oz on Donald Trump Jr’s podcast, the president, who has many unusual views about medicine and health, thinks Diet Coke is a health elixir.

“Your dad argues that diet soda is good for him because it kills grass – if poured on grass – so, therefore, it must kill cancer cells inside the body,” Oz said. “[M]aybe he’s on to something,” Trump Jr replied. Or maybe he’s on something. Still, Trump should probably run his diet soda ideas by his health secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr – who, as we all know, has some unorthodox ideas of his own: he once said that he thinks wifi causes a “leaky brain” and chemicals in the water supply could turn children transgender.

All of this may sound bonkers to the layperson but perhaps we should suspend our disbelief. After all, if the 25th amendment can’t be implemented, our only chance of Making America Sane Again might be an extraterrestrial intervention. Aliens, if you’re reading this: please come visit the US! We’ll give you a nice cold can of cancer-busting soda and take you straight to our leader.