Trump’s Third Term

In a telephone interview last week with NBC’s Kristen Welker, Donald Trump refused to rule out running for a third term as president. Trump, who seems to think his approval ratings are higher than they actually are, told Welker that “a lot of people” wanted him to be president a third time. “We're very popular,” he told her. Trump claims his approval ratings are the highest of any president in this century, in the 70% percentile.

That, of course, isn’t true.

In the most current Reuters/Ipsos poll, 45% of Americans approve of Trump's job performance. He comes in slightly higher, around 50%, when people are asked about immigration. George W. Bush had a 90% approval rating following Sept. 11, 2001.

Still, the notion of Trump running for a third term in office continues to surface. At a House Republican retreat in January, Trump told the crowd, in that way he has of suggesting he is about to do something impermissible, “I think I’m not allowed to run again.” Turning to Speaker Mike Johnson he asked, “Am I allowed to run again, Mike?” The answer is resoundingly no. The 22nd Amendment to the Constitution, added in 1951 after President Franklin Roosevelt’s four terms in office, provides that “No person shall be elected to the office of the 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 President more than once.”

But that didn’t keep Steve Bannon from calling for Trump to run again, during a speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC). He told the crowd, "We want Trump in ‘28.”

It’s not a joke, and we need to take it seriously. This is the same man who repeatedly refused to commit to accepting the results of an election if he lost. People were nonetheless shocked when he made good on that refusal in 2020. They should not have been, and we must not be now. It’s time to prepare, which means gearing up in both the courts of law, where this issue will surely go to the Supreme Court for a decision if Trump pursues it, and the court of public opinion, where even those who have supported Trump can be convinced it’s not a good idea to have anyone, let alone someone in their eighties, serve a third term, especially when the law doesn’t permit it.

On Christmas Eve, and again in early January, I wrote about Trump’s fixation with Greenland, suggesting that it wasn’t just the next bright shiny thing many people seemed to think it was and we needed to take it seriously. “The concern isn’t that Trump will actually invade Greenland (at least not yet). It’s the damage he’s capable of doing to our relationships with key allies when he continues to talk smack like this. It’s lawlessness, it’s the talk of authoritarians, not American presidents, and that means we need to keep an eye on it.” This is more of the same. Trump always says the quiet part out loud. We need to listen. And when has “the law forbids it” ever meant anything to him?

When Welker asked Trump if he had a plan for serving a third term, he confirmed that there were “plans,” suggesting that his Vice President, JD Vance, could win and then return power to him. Welker asked if there were other plans. Trump said there were but refused to offer specifics, cutting her off with a sharp, “No,” although he told her he wasn’t joking about the idea of a third term, saying, “No, no I'm not joking. I’m not joking.”

How would Trump pursue this, given what appears to be the plain language in the 22nd Amendment? There is some decades-old legal scholarship suggesting that while a president may not be “elected” a third time, there are mechanisms that would permit him to “serve.” So, for instance, Trump’s comment suggests there is some thinking that he could be elected Vice President with JD Vance at the top of the ticket, and then Vance would magically step aside for him after winning. The legal rumblings are purely academic and have never been tested in court. The same is true for a strained interpretation of the 22nd Amendment that says a president cannot serve more than two consecutive terms and inserts language that isn’t in the Amendment itself into the mix.

But, when has Trump ever gone with a legal theory virtually everyone thought was crazy—and then made it work out in his favor? And we know how well Trump plays the delay game in court. The time to get serious about knocking out the idea of a third term is now, before he can get it in circulation and give it currency. Two is more than enough.

We’re in this together,

Joyce