On Sunday, Donald Trump said that he was “not joking” about running for a third term. How the second-term president will try to breach a constitutional barrier that prevents a president from serving a third term is not clear. The statements could be a ploy to redirect attention away from recent controversies, including a leaked signal chain in which some of his top advisors accidentally added a journalist into a top-secret chat about a planned military operation.
NBC Interview
“There are methods by which you could do it,” Trump shared with NBC News during a phone interview from Mar-a-Lago. Later, he told reporters aboard Air Force One as they traveled to Washington that “I have had more people ask me to have a third term, which in a way is a fourth term because the other election, the 2020 election, was totally rigged.”
“I don’t want to talk about a third term now because no matter how you look at it, we’ve got a long time to go,” the president added.
The 22nd Amendment
After President Franklin D. Roosevelt was elected for four terms, the 22nd Amendment was added to the Constitution. The amendment reads that “no person shall be elected to the office of President more than twice,, and no person who has held the office of President, or acted as President, for more than two years of a term to which some other person was elected President shall be elected to the office of the President more than once.”
Others’ Thoughts on Trump’s Plans
“This is yet another escalation in his clear effort to take over the government and dismantle our democracy.” New York Rep. Daniel Goldman wrote in a statement. Goldman was the lead counsel during Trump’s first impeachment. “If Congressional Republicans believe in the Constitution, they will go on the record opposing Trump’s ambitions for a third term.”
“We want Trump in ’28,” Steve Bannon, Trump’s former strategist, said last month during the Conservative Political Action Conference.
“There are no credible legal arguments for him to run for a third term,” constitutional law professor at Northeastern, Jeremy Paul, said.
JD Vance’s Role
During the NBC interview, Trump was asked if his plans could include Vice President JD Vance running for president and, if elected, passing the torch to him. “Well, that’s one,” Trump said, then added, “but there are others too. There are others.” When asked if he could share how, he simply replied, “No.”
Derek Muller, a professor of election law at Notre Dame, shared that according to the 12th Amendment,, “no person constitutionally ineligible to the office of President shall be eligible to that of Vice-President of the United States.” Which means if Trump isn’t an eligible candidate for president, he would then not be able to run for vice president either.
“I don’t think there’s any ‘one weird trick’ to getting around presidential term limits,” Muller said. “A lame-duck president like Donald Trump has every incentive in the world to make it seem like he’s not a lame duck.”
During the interview, he was asked if he would want to continue working “the toughest job in the country” at the age of 82. “Well, I like working,” the president replied.
Not as Popular as He Might Think
Trump went on to state that the majority of Americans would support him serving a third term due to his popularity. He then falsely claimed that he had “the highest poll numbers of any Republican for the last 100 years.” Recent polls show that Trump did have a positive approval rating during his first month in office, but those ratings were still the second lowest in modern history.
