A Presidential Catch-22 Situation....

I've been in a lot of physical pain with my carpal tunnel lately. Getting to sleep has been hard. Well, last night my mind started wandering to what I thought might be a Catch-22 situation. 

First of all- I'm not advocating hurting/killing any of our leaders. Last night, as I was trying to get some fitful sleep, I was thinking on how there's been several of movies in which the Vice President is the secret bad guy trying to overthrow the Commander-In-Chief. But I couldn't think of a film in which the President was trying to eliminate the Vice President. And that's where this scenario fostered. 

Imagine that you are agent of the US Secret Service. It is your job to protect the lives of both the President and Vice-President of the United States at all costs. 

One day, you walk into the Oval Office and the President is holding a gun to the head of the Vice President. Clearly, to dissolve this situation, you would do what you could to disarm the President and prevent the VP from being killed. Like shoot the POTUS in the leg to make him drop the gun. But what if there was an added twist to this situation.

In the President's other hand is one of those dead-man switches. If you shoot the President, he will drop the switch, killing both him and the VP. But if you don't do anything in 10 seconds, the President will kill his running mate. But he'll then disarm the bomb switch.

As a member of the Secret Service, you are to prevent the death of the President and the Vice President. So what do you do? Is there a winnable solution? Does the Secret Service consider the VP expendable at all costs to the President? Even if the leader of the free world was to go rogue? And should the President kill the VP, would the Secret Service just arrest their boss or would they retaliate knowing that the bomb won't go off?

I started thinking more on the current state of things and I was sure that many who read this would say 'It's Trump and Pence. Let them both die." So I pose to you in this scenario that you must place your favorite President/Vice President duo of all-time. If this was Obama/Biden, what would you do? Is there anything you can do to save the lives of both leaders? Is this even a damned if you do/damned if you don't situation like a Catch-22? 

I'd be very interested to hear you thoughts on this. If there's a detail I have missed, I would like to hear of it. If someone decides to turn this idea into a movie or a book, contact me! I'm available and eager to break into the entertainment industry.