The legal beagles Mark Joseph Stern and Dahlia Lithwick at Slate fielded a question from a reader asking if Trump could really run for a third term as he often hints at doing? Bannon made some news the other day proclaiming that he was going to.
Lithwick points out that the clear meaning of the 22nd Amendment says no. It says:
“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.
It seems pretty clear to me. Of course if everything goes completely sideways, he stages a successful coup and the constitution is no longer relevant, who knows what he could do? Stern addresses one scenario the reader had posed:
Tracey does point out one potential loophole in her letter: I think it’s clear that Don Jr. could run for president in 2028, with Donald Trump as his vice presidential candidate. And if they win, at 12:01 p.m. on Jan. 20, 2029, Don Jr. can resign and Donald Trump will become the president. There is nothing, to my mind, in the 22nd Amendment that forbids that. I mean, we can do a pragmatic, functionalist reading, and we can say it goes against the spirit of the amendment. But it doesn’t go against the text. As long as Donald Trump is not elected as president for a third time, he could be elected vice president and then become president. And I do not believe there is any limitation on his power to then serve the remaining three years and 364 days as president if that occurs.
I guess anything could happen. But as Stern also points out, what is the likelihood that people would vote for that freak Don Jr no matter what the clever plan? I’d think Vance would be more likely but Trump could never be sure that Vance would give up power. Anyway, that’s all extremely far-fetched.
More importantly, Trump will be 82 in 2028. He’s losing it now and I would guess we’ll see even more serious degradation over the next four years. He’s pretty much turned over the presidency to Elon Musk and Project 2025 and is concentrating on casting, personal profits and vengeance. He spends his days on the golf course and his nights DJing at Mar-a-Lago. There’s no way he can run again in 4 yrs and I doubt he even wants to. Every day he’s more of a spent force.
That’s not to say he isn’t going to inflict great damage. But he’s a very lame duck and while we have no choice but to fight him every step of the way, we also need to keep our eyes on what they really have in store for us next and it isn’t likely to be Donald Trump.