Over the weekend Donald Trump said that he “wasn’t joking” about running for a 3rd term. But he should be joking, because that is never going to happen.
When Trump first became President, I thought it a real possibility that Trump would never last through his first term, not because of impeachment or the 25th amendment, but just because this lazy shit would never want to do the amount of work that it takes to be president. But, as on many other occasions, he proved me wrong. He proved that one could be president while spending the majority of your time watching TV. He just enjoyed the unlimited power and the unending attention way too much, and could leave most of the work for other people. So I believe that he is serious about wanting a third term.
There is, of course, a practical problem: the 22nd Amendment (and also a portion of the 12th Amendment).
The 22nd Amendment, ratified after FDR’s four terms, says this in relevant part:
| 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 the President more than once. |
This would have allowed LBJ to run for a second term in 1968, because he had only served one year and two months. If JFK had been assassinated a year later, LBJ would have been out of luck.
The 12th Amendment, which improved the process for electing the President and Vice President through the electoral college, says this in relevant part:
| No person constitutionally ineligible to the office of President shall be eligible to that of Vice-President of the United States. |
Although the 12th Amendment was enacted well before the 22nd, together they function to keep anyone from being elected more than twice as President.
The Vice Presidential Strategy
One theory is that Trump could be elected as Vice President on a ticket with, say, J.D. Vance, and Vance would then resign, handing Trump a third term. This, the theory goes, would get around the problem that no one can be “elected” more than twice.
Here are the problems with this theory:
- The 22nd Amendment clearly anticipates that a Vice President (like LBJ) becomes President the first time because of the incapacity of the President on the ticket they were elected on. But they wouldn’t get to serve out a full term this way. That’s why it cannot be for more than two years.
- Under the 12th Amendment, Trump could not be elected to Vice President in the first place, because he is “constitutionally ineligible” to be President a third time.
- If J.D. Vance were to be elected President, there would be nothing to compel him to resign and hand the presidency back to Trump.
- If that theory were true, then the Obamas could run as a ticket, with Michelle at the top — Michelle, btw, is still the most popular “politician” in America — and she could then resign and hand the presidency right back to Barack. (Unlike J.D. Vance, Michelle really does not want to be President.)
This is essentially a variation of the Putin-Medvedev “power swap” strategy, but in a more limited sense.
The Speaker of the House Strategy
This is an even more far-fetched variant on the Vice Presidential strategy, under which Trump becomes Speaker of the House — as some of you constitutional scholars know, the House Speaker does not technically need to be a member of the House — where he would be third in line under the Presidential Succession Act of 1947. In order for this theory to work you would have to have all of the following:
- The House in Republican hands.
- A different set of people (maybe J.D. Vance and Nikki Haley) elected as Republican President and Vice-President.
- The resignation of both that elected President and Vice-President to make way for Trump.
- A path to overcoming all of the difficulties already part of the Vice Presidential strategy.
The Presidential Qualifications Strategy
Under this theory, the only qualifications needed to be President are the original ones — being a “natural born” citizen, being 35 or older, and having resided in the United States for 14 years — and the 22nd amendment would just be ignored. Republican state party’s could theoretically put Trump on their ballots even though he is ineligible, and if he wins in the primaries, make him their candidate. That still would not make him eligible to be elected as President.
That theory depends on the Supreme Court either ignoring (or never getting to the merits of) a challenge under the 22nd amendment, which — even with this Supreme Court — is highly unlikely. Remember, this Supreme Court decided last year in a 9:0 unanimous decision that the state’s could not keep Trump off the ballots even though he had arguably violated the insurrection clause of the 14th amendment. Under the precedent of that ruling, individual state parties don’t get to make those kinds of decisions.
Other Considerations
In addition, by 2028 Trump will be 82 years old (and 88 by the end of the term). At the current rate of his blowing up the American economy, he is likely to be the least popular President ever. (He’s the only President to never top 49% approval ratings in either of his terms.)
More than an inspiration, he could be a lead weight for the Republican party by then. But never to be constrained by facts or any other kind of reality, fantasizing about a 3rd term allows Trump to delude himself, and to a certain extent, to delude his base. It keeps him “relevant” even though he is already a lame duck, and will be a much lamer duck by 2026 or 2027.
