This weekend, Donald Trump told NBC: “I’m not joking” about seeking a third term as president.
While at Mar-a-Lago, he answered a random Sunday morning call to his mobile phone and went on to tell Kristen Welker: “A lot of people want me to do it. But, I mean, I basically tell them we have a long way to go, you know, it’s very early in the administration.”
The world should be long past the point where they take the president’s comments “seriously but not literally.” Widespread tariffs are in place. The Jan 6 rioters have been pardoned. Canada and Greenland are under territorial threat from the US. Elon Musk is wielding a chainsaw at the so-called Department of Government Efficiency. USAID has been shut down. Scarcely qualified conspiracy theorists have been appointed to head key government departments.
The 22nd Amendment of the US Constitution states: “No person shall be elected to the office of President more than twice”. Trump was elected as the 45th president in 2016 and the 47th in 2024. That would seem to rule him out. Apparently not. He should still be taken seriously after telling NBC’s White House correspondent, in characteristically mangled syntax, “there are methods which you could do it.”
Ways to remain in the White House have long been under consideration in his inner circle. Trump is the candidate who told a Christian rally during the 2024 election campaign: “In four years, you don’t have to vote again. We’ll have it fixed so good, you’re not gonna have to vote.”
Steve Bannon, Trump’s former chief strategist and alt-right outrider, has already predicted that Trump will “run again in 2028 and win”. That may be impossible under the current rule of law in the United States but the first convicted felon president has a long track record confronting, defying and overturning such considerations.
The simplest way to Trump president number 47+ would be to repeal the 22nd Amendment. It can be done although the 21st Amendment, prohibiting alcohol, is the only amendment ever repealed.
Trump does not currently have anything like the support in the US Congress to pull that off. Repeal requires two thirds vote in both houses of Congress and by legislatures, or conventions, in three quarters of the United States, that is 38 out of 50.
Even if all elected representatives from Trump’s Republican party supported the idea of repeal, which they certainly do not, they are a long way short of commanding majorities to do it. Republicans hold just over 50% of seats in the House of Representatives, 218 to 215 Democrats. There are 53 Republican US senators compared to 47 Democrats.
A seismic upheaval in US politics would be required in the 2026 mid-term elections if Trump were to attempt to use this constitutional method to walk into the front door of the White House for a third time. If he is extremely popular next November and the Republicans campaign for a Trump third term, it is theoretically possible that they could get two thirds of the seats in the Lower House, where all will be contested. In the Senate, the Democrats would still have a blocking minority of 41 senators, even if the Republicans were to win all 35 of the seats up for election (including 22 which they currently hold).
Republican organisers have worked hard for several decades to distort state elections in their favour, much more effectively than Democrats. Voting districts have been gerrymandered and voter suppression – making it difficult for minorities likely to vote against Republicans to actually cast their ballots – is rife. Still Trump only carried thirty-one of the fifty states in the 2024 election.
Delaying challenges in the courts would be inevitable, even without them it would be well nigh impossible to get repeal ratified in enough states in time for Trump to run in 2026. It took nearly four years to enact the 22nd Amendment in 1951. It was introduced following Franklin D Roosevelt’s four election victories in defiance of the two-term precedent set by the founding fathers, presidents George Washington and Thomas Jefferson.
The repeal might be in place for Trump to run in 2032. If he’s still around. He would be 86 by then. It is much more likely, and consistent with his behaviour hitherto, that he would attempt to shoulder aside the constitution, backed up by his MAGA fans and by the justice system which he is currently dominating and subverting.
One idea is “doing a Putin”. The Russian ruler got round his presidential term limit by serving a term as prime minister to a puppet president, Dmitri Medvedev. There is a credible legal argument that the 22nd Amendment does not bar Trump from running as vice president. Whether JD Vance, say, or anyone else, would be prepared to step aside having been legally elected president in their own name is another question. Hillary Clinton considered this method to bring back her husband Bill Clinton as VP and Barack Obama looked at it during his second term, but both rejected it as unconstitutional.
Trump would have to rely on the “will of the people” to defy the existing democratic process and stay in power after the end of his term – ideally backed up by the conservative-leaning Supreme Court of the United States, to which he has appointed three allies so far. He is doing his best to plant the idea of staying on in the public mind, placing it in the context of his grievance that the legal system is biased against him.
On the Air Force One flight back from his Florida weekend, he told the accompanying press pool: “I have had more people ask me to have a 3rd term which in a way is a 4th term because the 2020 election was totally rigged… many people are saying “you’ve got to run again.”
It would only be a small step for Republicans to back him. Around 70% of Republican voters embrace Trump’s big lie that Joe Biden’s 2020 election was illegitimate. Immediately following the January 6 2021 attack on the US Capitol, Republican senators could have disqualified him from office for life but they voted not to convict him in his second impeachment trial. Republican Congressman Andy Ogles has already introduced a seemingly no-hope resolution which would allow Trump to stand for a third term.
Trump may well not be popular enough to try it on when he is ready. His economic moves seem to be causing consumer prices to go up and stock values to go down. America may also balk at being ruled by a Soviet-style Gerontocracy. On the other hand, some Americans have always liked the idea of a monarchy. The much-venerated founding father Alexander Hamilton argued that the president should be elected for life.
Trump referred to himself recently as “THE KING” on Truth Social. His sons Donald Trump junior and Barron Trump are already being touted as future presidents by some Republicans.
Confrontation in the courts and in legislative chambers is a certainty if Trump tries to stay on as President for another term. It would be likely to spill over into violence and civil unrest in the streets. He says its “too early” to talk about it but he is nor giving up. He keeps bringing up the topic.
Take President Trump seriously on this at least, his lust for perpetual power is no joke.