The most obvious sign he is thinking about breaking a constitutional barrier to leading the nation after his second term ends at the start of 2029, President Donald Trump stated Sunday, “I’m not joking” about attempting to serve a third term.
Trump, speaking from his private club Mar-a-Lago in a phone interview with NBC News, added, “There are ways you could do it.”
Later, from Florida to Washington on Air Force One, he told reporters, “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.” Trump lost that race to Joe Biden, a Democrat.
Trump nonetheless said, “I don’t want to discuss a third term now since, depending on your perspective, we still have a long way to go.”
Added to the Constitution in 1951 following President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s four consecutive elections, the 22nd Amendment states, “no person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice.”
Any effort to stay in office would be legally questionable and it is unknown how aggressively Trump might follow the concept. The remarks were nonetheless an amazing indication of the will to keep power by a president who had breached democratic customs four years earlier when he attempted to reverse the election he lost to Biden.
Rep. Daniel Goldman, a New York Democrat who was lead counsel for Trump’s first impeachment, said in a statement, “This is yet another escalation in his clear effort to take over the government and dismantle our democracy.” Should they believe in the Constitution, Congressional Republicans will publicly oppose Trump’s desires for a third term.
During a speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference last month, former Trump advisor Steve Bannon, who operates the right-wing “War Room” podcast, urged the president to run again.
We want Trump in ’28, he stated.
A 30-year-old ex-paralegal in Wisconsin, Kayla Thompson stated she would “definitely” like Trump to run again.
The country needs him. Thompson, who was at a campaign event Sunday with Elon Musk in Green Bay for a state Supreme Court election, said, “America is going in the right way and, if he doesn’t do it, we’re probably headed backwards.”
Boston’s Northeastern University constitutional law professor Jeremy Paul stated, “There are no credible legal arguments for him to run for a third term.”
NBC’s Kristen Welker inquired of Trump whether running for the top position under Vice President JD Vance and “then passing the baton to you” would be one possible path to a third term.
Trump said, “Well, that’s one.” There are others as well, though. There are more.
Could you name another one? Welker inquired.
Trump said, “No.”
Vance’s office did not promptly answer The Associated Press’s request for comment.
Derek Muller, a Notre Dame election law expert, said the 12th Amendment, enacted in 1804, states “no person constitutionally ineligible to the office of President shall be eligible to that of Vice-President of the United States.”
Muller claimed it suggests Trump is not qualified to run for vice president as well if the 22nd Amendment renders him unable to run for president once again.
Muller remarked, “I don’t believe there is any ‘one weird trick’ to circumventing presidential term limits.”
Furthermore, chasing a third term would call both exceptional federal and state official compliance as well as court and voter involvement.
He said Trump is discussing a third term for political purposes to “show as much strength as possible.”
“A lame-duck president like Donald Trump has every incentive in the world to make it seem like he’s not a lame duck,” he added.
Asked if he would want to continue working in “the hardest job in the country” at that time, Trump, who would be 82 by the conclusion of his second term,
The president said, “Well, I enjoy working.”
Trump claimed his popularity would lead Americans to support a third term. He wrongly said he had “the highest poll numbers of any Republican for the last 100 years.”
Gallup statistics reveal President George W. Bush attaining a 90% approval following the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks. Following the Gulf War in 1991, his father, President George H.W. Bush, reached 89%.
In Gallup statistics during his second term, Trump has reached 47%, despite saying to be “in the high 70s in many polls, in the real polls.”
Trump has joked to favorable crowds in the past about serving more than two terms.
He said during a House Republican conference in January, “Am I allowed to run again?”
Representatives for the congressional leadership—House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries of New York, Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., and Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer of New York—did not quickly react to AP inquiries for comment.
