A version of this story appeared in the What Matters of CNN. To get it in your reception box, register for free here.
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It is quite sure to assume that President Donald Trump will speak in the future close to the race for a third term, even if the Constitution says that he cannot.
Trump has shown no fear of contradicting the Constitution. He actively tries to put an end to the citizenship of the right of birth, for example, even if he is protected in the 14th amendment. The courts have blocked the effort for the moment.
He quickly tries to close agencies Created by the Congress and to stop expenses, or seize, The money with which he does not agree even if he has been approved, as the Constitution says, by the Congress.
His vice-president, JD Vance, suggested that the president could Simply ignore the courts.
He recently looked at, at least on social networks, to compare himself to a king.
He adopted readings outside the Constitution and was sometimes rewarded. The court has mainly approved its extensive vision of immunityJudging that the presidents are largely exempt from criminal proceedings for their actions during their mandate. On the other hand, the court rejected the “Independent State Legislative AssemblyTheory, which Trump and his allies used to try to overthrow the 2020 elections.
With all this in mind, how should Americans see Trump’s frequent jokes – if that’s what they are – about a third term? Trump is at the top of his power at the moment, with the republican majority refusing to stand up to the congress.
Who knows what drama will come in the next four years, but Trump already likes to talk about the next elections.
“It will be the greatest honor of my life to serve, not one but two or three times or four times,” Trump told Rally in Nevada at the end of JanuaryApparently joking and teasing that the comment would make the headlines. He said later: “No, it will be to serve twice. For the next four years, I will not rest. »»
“Should I run again?” Trump asked the supporters at an event in the month in black history at the White House last week to songs of “four more years!”
“There is your controversy right there,” said Trump.
There are many other examples of Trump and his most ferocious supporters.
During the conservative rally of the political action committee just outside Washington, Stephen Bannon, who went to prison for outrage at the Congress after refusing to testify to the Chamber Committee on January 6, said “We want Trump in 20028” and led the crowd in a song.
In December, appearing during a dinner in New York, Bannon argued that Trump could circumvent the 22nd amendment, which added a two -term presidential limit to the American Constitution in 1951, because the word “consecutive” is not in the text of the amendment.
In the House, representative Andy Ogles, a republican of Tennessee, introduced legislation to start the long tweaking process of the 22nd amendment text and to authorize a president who serves non -consecutive conditions to serve a third term of four years. The wording of the Ogles proposal would exclude former presidents with two mandates like Barack Obama to get out of retirement.
The repeal or modification of the 22nd amendment would require two thirds of the votes both in the House and the Senate and also to the ratification by three -quarters of the States.
No amendment has been ratified since the 1990s and this one was proposed for the first time in the 1700s. Otherwise, it was since the 1960s that the 26th amendment was ratified at the time of Vietnam when there was an active project. This amendment guarantees the right to vote for 18 years.
Even some supporters of Trump are opposed to the idea of changing the constitution of Trump.
Senator Markwayne Mullin, the Oklahoma Republican, said that he was taking Trump’s comments “like a joke, not being literal”.
“I do not change the Constitution, first of all, unless the American people have chosen to do so,” he said. Mullin, all the other Republicans and a certain number of democrats would take to obtain a two -thirds vote in the Senate to vibrate the ball on the modification of the Constitution. Do not hold your breath.
The only president to serve more than two mandates was Franklin D. Roosevelt. The 22nd amendment was ratified in 1951, in the years following the death of Roosevelt in office.
The text is quite clear:
“It’s illegal. He has no chance. This is all that there is to say: “Michael Waldman, president and chief executive officer of the Brennan Center for Justice at the Nyu School of Law, told me in an email when I asked how to take Trump’s jokes.
Legal reality may be that the Constitution prohibits a person from serving for a third term, but political reality is that Trump has never been the type to let the Constitution get on his way.
Nathan L. Gonzales, the editor -in -chief of the elections inside, pleads in Call That the Americans should be ready to make Trump question the rule to two terms.
“It is not because the Constitution currently prohibits Trump from running again that he will not try,” writes Gonzales “difficult standards is what Trump does, and that is partly why the Republicans like it.”
There is a similar argument of James Romoser in Politico magazineWho notes that Vladimir Putin in Russia and and Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Türkiye both found means around the limits of the terms, although the American check and balancing system should be stronger. A separate idea is that Trump could, perhaps, introduce himself to a vice-president in 2028, then be raised to the presidency by a resignation.
‘A term … and then I’m going to leave’
Although he likes to tease the idea of a third term at the moment, there have been times when he rejected it, as in a Interview over time Last April, long before the end of his political return.
“I’m going to serve a quarter, I’m going to do an excellent job. We are going again a very successful country … And then I’m going to leave, “he said.