Why Trump’s Third-Term Talk Might Backfire
MAGA chatter about an unconstitutional third term for Donald Trump is back — because it never goes away. He could make it disappear with a few definitive sentences. Occasionally, he breaks character and shows he knows it ain’t happening, but there’s always an asterisk, as in these comments on Monday. Per Reuters:
Some supporters have suggested that one way around the prohibition would be for Trump to run as vice president, while another candidate stood for election as president and resigned, letting Trump again assume the presidency. “I’d be allowed to do that,” Trump said on Monday, in an exchange with reporters aboard Air Force One as he flew from Malaysia to Tokyo. But he added: “I wouldn’t do that. I think it’s too cute. Yeah, I would rule that out because it’s too cute. I think the people wouldn’t like that. It’s too cute. It’s not — it wouldn’t be right.”
But here’s the asterisk:
Referring to the possibility of a third term, Trump said: “I would love to do it. I have my best numbers ever.” When pressed by a reporter whether he was not ruling out a third term, he said, “Am I not ruling it out? I mean you’ll have to tell me.”
Actually, Trump does not have his “best numbers ever,” and as a matter of fact, his “numbers” have generally sucked, even though that hasn’t kept him from beating two equally unpopular Democrats thanks to circumstances that don’t have a lot to do with him. In any event, he clearly wants to keep alive the speculation that, just as he managed an extremely improbable comeback in 2024, he might find a way to stick around beyond 2028, despite the fact that he will be older than Joe Biden was in 2024 and despite, you know, the 22nd Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
As noted above, Trump has recognized that the Vance-Trump 2028 scheme (whereby a newly elected President J.D. Vance would resign immediately, making his veep president) that some boosters have mentioned won’t work. He says it’s “too cute,” but the more immediate problem is the 12th Amendment, which says that “no person constitutionally ineligible to the office of President shall be eligible to that of Vice-President of the United States.”
Last week, former Trump strategist and pardoned ex-con Steve Bannon, a constant fount of third-term chatter, told The Economist there’s a team working on a plan to let Trump serve beyond 2029:
Trump is going to be president in ’28, and people ought to just get accommodated with that … At the appropriate time, we’ll lay out what the plan is. But there is a plan.
Again, Trump could shut up Bannon with the flick of a Truth Social post. But he never quite does. Why is that?
The most common take on the third-term talk is that Trump is just trolling his critics and entertaining his fans, who would like nothing better than for Democrats to fear they will never be rid of him. If it’s not just “owning the libs,” CNN’s Aaron Blake suggests the president fears looking like or even becoming a lame duck. It does seem plausible that the idea of no longer being the center of attention every single moment might be excruciating for this exceptionally self-regarding man. He might also experience deep heartache at the notion of leaving the White House without a plausible plan to return and wreak more vengeance on his rivals and enemies.
Whatever his motivations, his tolerance of the third-term talk is dangerous to his MAGA political movement and to the Republican Party. His followers are no more interested in inconvenient constitutional provisions than he is. In their eyes, he’s the greatest president to ever live, who literally saved America from imminent destruction not once but twice and whom God has clearly rescued from an assassin’s bullet by direct divine intervention once if not twice. If he says he can run again, they’re not going to question it, but if he says he’s not sure it’s a great idea for him to run again, they’re going to do everything possible to get him to change his mind. Before long, there could be a Trump Third Term Bubble large enough to blot out the sky.
When it inevitably bursts (as it will unless Trump seriously considers a military coup and an actual, undisguised fascist dictatorship), MAGA folk will be very disappointed and may be less than enthused about being offered the booby prize of J.D. Vance. The Ohioan might be fine as a momentary placeholder, but as the leader of the free world and inheritor of the MAGA movement? Vance might be the worst of both worlds for the GOP: someone who doesn’t excite the party’s feral base but does terrify Democrats as an authentic authoritarian more interested in crushing the opposition forever than in sorting through bribes and turning the White House into a gaudy and gilded monument to himself.
If Trump does want to sell Vance to his party and to the general electorate, he will need to get out of the way. That could be one problem Trump really can’t “fix.”