He claimed he was just joking after President Trump said he wanted to be a dictator for a day last year. Now he says that he might try to get into power even after the Constitution stipulates that he must give up on it, and this time he insists that he is not kidding.
Maybe he isn't. Trump loves to stir pots and get up from critics. The unconstitutional third-year story distracts from other news and delays the day he is considered a lame duck. Certainly, some of his own camp considers it a joke, as it compensates for reporters who have laughed at it and mimicked the White House taking it seriously.
However, the fact that Trump inserted the idea into the conversations of its citizens shows uncertainty about the future of the American constitutional system, nearly 250 years after the country became independent. For generations, the president's commitment to restrictions on power and the rule of law has been questioned, and his critics fear the country is on a dark path.
After all, Trump has already tried to take power against the constitution when he tried to overturn the 2020 election even if he lost. He later called for a “dismissal” of the constitution to return to the White House without a new election. And in 11 weeks since he took office, he has pushed the boundaries of enforcement more than any of his modern predecessors.
“This is the culmination of what he has already begun in my mind. It is an orderly effort to destabilize and undermine our democracy, allowing him to take on a much greater force,” said Daniel Goldman, a New York Democrat and lead lawyer during Trump's first round each, in an interview.
“Many people aren't talking about it because it's not the most pressing issue of that particular day,” he said Friday that the stock market had been plunging in response to Trump's newly declared trade war. But he added that the attack on democracy “is actually moving, so people need to realize that it is no longer hypothetical or speculative.”
For Trump's allies, such a speech is hyperbolic and excessive frustration by the opposition parties who have lost the election and are unable to accept it. Trump, 78, isn't really going to run the third term they're keeping, and even if he finds a way around the constitution, it's up to voters to decide whether to re-elease him.
His allies argue that Trump is not serious, but he has a way of throwing away ideas that seem outrageous at first. It would have been unthinkable for the president to threaten to seize Greenland and Canada, or forgive the rioters who stolen the Capitol, who halted the transfer of power and beat police officers. But in the Trump era, the journey from the unthinkable to reality was very short.
Trump's dictatorial tendencies and disregard for constitutional norms is well documented. In this second term alone, he was already trying to overturn the birthright citizenship embedded in the Fourteenth Amendment, effectively employing the power of Congress to determine what money will be spent, whether government agencies will be shut down, and removing the unified military leadership to enforce greater personal loyalty and punished opposition in academia, news media and federal professions.
The two-term restriction of the presidency that Trump wants to violate has its roots in the Republic when George Washington voluntarily resigned as the country's first president eight years later, setting a precedent for those who follow him.
Some of his successors have made breaking precedents a toy, including Ulysses S. Grant, Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson. However, no one actually photographed it until Democrat Franklin D. Roosevelt, until World War III was furious overseas in 1940, and then won the fourth term in 1944.
In response, Congress gained strong Republican support and passed the 22nd Amendment, declaring that he would not be elected to the President's Office more than twice.
Since then, some presidents have expressed their rethinking of the period of restrictions. Ronald Reagan said in 1987 that he liked to abolish the 22nd Amendment. Bill Clinton in 2003 believed that the constitution must limit the president to consecutive terms. “For future generations, the 22nd amendment needs to be changed.”
But the president hasn't tried to avoid it himself, but it's unclear how it will go, no matter how Trump tries. Tennessee Republican Andy Ogres introduced constitutional amendments that allow presidents who did not win two consecutive terms to be re-executed. However, that is not a serious outlook, as the amendment requires two-thirds of the House of Representatives and ratification by three-quarters of the state.
So some Trump allies have said it's pointless for the president or enemy to defend the third term to worry about it. “If Congress passed a constitutional amendment with the necessary majority and the required number of states, he could have run if he ratified the amendment,” said former chairman Newt Ginrich. “If it doesn't, it's a conversation idea for a cocktail party.”
Still, it's Trump's favorite cocktail party conversation. While claiming for now that it was “too early to think about it,” he recently told NBC News that he “wasn't kidding” about the possibility, claiming there was a “way” to avoid constitutional limitations.
White House spokesman Karoline Leavitt didn't elaborate on what such “ways” were, and there was no indication that the administration was pursuing at this point. “He has four years,” she told reporters. “There's a lot to do.”
Some have suggested that running for Vice President in 2028 and running for Vice President along with flexible candidates at the top of the ticket will bypass term restrictions.
Scholars will argue whether the 12th Amendment prohibits such a scenario. This is because they say, “People who are not constitutionally ineligible to the President's Office are not eligible for Vice President of the United States.” If Trump is not elected to the office again, will he still be “qualified” to become president?
Such arguments are esoteric and, for some, are meaningless distractions. “I'm not taking Trump seriously about this,” said John Yu, a law professor at the University of California, Berkeley and a former Justice Department official under President George W. Bush. “There are some quirky ways he could serve another term, but it was definitely a plot line for “24” or “West Wing.” But none of them is realistic. ”
Even some Trump critics said the president's meditation on the third term should not be paid much attention. “There are many real threats to the constitutional order that Trump and his allies are posing for, and I think we should focus on them,” said Larry Diamond, a senior fellow at the Hoover Association at Stanford University, who specializes in democratic issues.
However, other legal scholars said Trump's law corn was made clear in his third term speech. “The president is once again defeating, humiliating, and laughing at the US Constitution,” said J. Michael Luttig, a conservative former federal appeals judge.
Most Americans don't support Trump's attempts to keep him in a third term, but they don't take it as a joke either. A YouGov survey last week found that 56% were opposed to him seeking another term, even if he was seeking another term.
Trump has publicly teased opponents that he may have surpassed the limits that go back to his first term. Sometimes he shows his willingness to ignore rules to maintain his job. In July 2020, he came to the idea of postponing the fall election, citing the Covid-19 pandemic, urging an unusually solid pushback from senior Republicans.
After losing to Joseph R. Biden Jr. that November, Trump put pressure on governors, state lawmakers, Congress and his vice president to cast the results, allowing him to restrain plans that were indicted by federal and state prosecutors before he indicted him before reelection last fall.
Lucian Ahmad Way, author of “Revolution and Dictatorship: The Violent Origins of Durable Authoritarianism,” said Trump's latest meditation on ignoring the restrictions of two terms should not be discounted.
“Wei, a professor of political science at the University of Toronto,” said: “Efforts to avoid time limits have been a key component of the fully authoritarian and competitive authoritarian rules within the scope of Russia's Belarus and African countries.”
Certainly, some of the world's most infamous dictators have found ways to circumvent constitutional provisions. Among them were Alexander Lukashenko of Belarus (now in power for 31 years), Vladimir V. Putin of Russia (2015), and XI Ginping of China (2012).
A 2019 survey shows that a third of incumbent leaders in the world who have reached the end of constitutional conditions will try to maintain power. Of the 234 incumbents from 106 countries inspected, none of them explicitly ignored their constitution, but they sought to bypass restrictions through assumed loopholes, new interpretations, or constitutional revisions.
Mira Vertigue, a law professor at the University of Virginia and the lead author of the study, said such leaders were trying to envelop their grasp of power in the veneer of legality. “This is a very clear constitutional rule,” she said. “The four plus fours are eight years old and anyone who can count knows if you're in the ninth grade. You're violating the constitution.”
Some Trump's allies have sophisticated ideas. His former chief strategist, Stephen K. Bannon, suggests that Trump should be able to run again, as his two terms were not in a row. Amendments to Article 22 do not allow that, but certainly Goldman has introduced a resolution reaffirming that the two-term restrictions apply whether the conditions are continuous.
Others suggest that Trump can run and basically drive the courts and the state out of the vote. The Supreme Court has rejected efforts by several states to remove Trump from the 2024 vote under the 14th Amendment, which disqualifies rebels from office. However, the restrictions on the 22nd amendment are more clearly defined, and it seems like the possibility that Trump will persuade a judge is farther apart.
Most extreme is the fear that Trump simply refuses to quit his job, and the scenario is one that is not dispelled by the successor of a military leader in senior uniforms. During his bid to overturn the 2020 defeat, some allies urged Trump to declare martial law and rerun elections in the states he lost.
The United States is a more durable democracy than most people, and Verstigue said he doubts Trump will succeed in maintaining power after January 20, 2029. “All of these people love their job and want to find a way to keep it,” she said. “That's very common.”
