U.S. President Donald Trump said on Sunday that “I’m not joking” about trying to serve a third term, the clearest indication he is considering ways to breach a constitutional barrier against continuing to lead the country after his second term ends in early 2029.
“There are methods which you could do it,” Trump said in a telephone interview with NBC News. He also said that “it is far too early to think about it.”
He elaborated later to reporters on Air Force One from Florida to Washington, D.C., 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.” Trump lost that election to Democrat Joe Biden.
Still, Trump added: “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 22nd Amendment, added to the U.S. Constitution in 1951 after Franklin D. Roosevelt was elected president four times in a row, says “no person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice.”
Any attempt to remain in office would be legally suspect, and it is unclear how seriously Trump might pursue the idea. The comments nonetheless were an extraordinary reflection of the desire to maintain power by a president who had violated democratic traditions four years ago when he tried to overturn the election he lost to Biden.
“This is yet another escalation in his clear effort to take over the government and dismantle our democracy,” said a statement from Rep. Daniel Goldman, a New York Democrat who served as lead counsel for 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.”
Steve Bannon, a former Trump strategist who runs the right-wing War Room podcast, called for the president to run again during a speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference last month.
“We want Trump in ’28,” he said.
Possible run as VP?
Jeremy Paul, a constitutional law professor at Boston’s Northeastern University, said that “there are no credible legal arguments for him to run for a third term.”
NBC’s Kristen Welker asked Trump if one potential avenue to a third term was having Vice-President JD Vance run for the top job and “then pass the baton to you.”
“Well, that’s one,” Trump responded. “But there are others, too. There are others.”
“Can you tell me another?” Welker asked in the early morning interview, before Trump left his Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Fla., to spend the day at his nearby golf course.
“No,” Trump replied.
Vance’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment from The Associated Press.
Derek Muller, a professor of election law at the University of Notre Dame, noted that the 12th Amendment, which was ratified in 1804, says that “no person constitutionally ineligible to the office of President shall be eligible to that of Vice-President of the United States.”
Muller said that indicates that if Trump is not eligible to run for president again because of the 22nd Amendment, he is not eligible to run for vice-president, either.
“I don’t think there’s any ‘one weird trick’ to getting around presidential term limits,” he said.
In addition, pursuing a third term would require extraordinary acquiescence by federal and state officials, not to mention the courts and voters themselves.
Muller suggested that Trump is talking about a third term for political reasons 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 said.
‘I like working’
Trump, who would be 82 at the end of his second term, was asked whether he would want to keep serving in “the toughest job in the country” at that point.
“Well, I like working,” the president said.
He suggested that Americans would go along with a third term because of his popularity. He falsely claimed to have “the highest poll numbers of any Republican for the last 100 years.”
Gallup data shows then-president George W. Bush reaching a 90 per cent approval rating after the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001. His father, President George H.W. Bush, hit 89 per cent following the Gulf War in 1991.
Trump has maxed out at 47 per cent in Gallup data during his second term, despite claiming to be “in the high 70s in many polls, in the real polls.”
He has mused before about serving longer than two terms, generally with jokes to friendly audiences.
“Am I allowed to run again?” he said during a House Republican retreat in January.
Representatives for the congressional leadership — Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson, House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries, Republican Senate Majority leader John Thune and Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer — did not immediately respond to requests for comment from the AP.
