Donald Trump says he is ‘not joking’ over possible third term – US politics live https://www.theguardian.com/us-news...tin-russia-iran-tariffs-us-politics-live-news President tells NBC ‘there are methods’ in securing a third term despite constitutional barriers 'There are methods which you could do it,' says Trump about possible third term Good morning, and welcome to our US politics blog amid news that Donald Trump is “not joking” about a possible third term. The comments on Sunday are the clearest indication yet he is considering ways to breach a constitutional barrier against continuing to lead the country after his second term ends at the beginning of 2029. “There are methods which you could do it,” Trump said in a telephone interview with NBC News from Mar-a-Lago. And he told host Kristen Welker: “I am not joking.” He elaborated later to reporters on Air Force One from Florida to Washington that “I have had more people ask me to have a third term, which in a way is a fourth term because the other election, the 2020 election, was totally rigged.” Trump lost that election to Joe Biden. Still, Trump added: “I don’t want to talk about a third term now because no matter how you look at it, we’ve got a long time to go.” As Associated Press reports, the 22nd Amendment, added to the constitution in 1951 after President Franklin D Roosevelt was elected four times in a row, says “no person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice”. Any attempt to remain in office would be legally suspect and it is unclear how seriously Trump might pursue the idea. The comments nonetheless were an extraordinary reflection of the desire to maintain power by a president who had violated democratic traditions four years ago when he tried to overturn the election he lost to Biden. We’ll be bringing you more reaction from Trump’s allies and opponents as the day progresses. There are also plenty of other developments: Donald Trump has said he is “pissed off” with Vladimir Putin over his approach to a ceasefire in Ukraine and threatened to levy tariffs on Moscow’s oil exports if the Russian leader does not agree to a truce within a month. You can read more on this in our Ukraine blog. In the same NBC interview as Trump made his Putin and third term comments, he also threatened to bomb Iran, saying that if “they don’t make a deal” to curb their nuclear weapons programme, “there will be bombing. It will be bombing the likes of which they have never seen before”. You can read Iran’s reaction in our Middle East blog. Trump spoke to the British prime minister, Keir Starmer, on Sunday evening as the UK seeks to avoid tariffs that the US president has threatened to impose on a wide range of trade partners on Wednesday. He is calling it “Liberation Day”, saying the world’s top economy has been “ripped off by every country in the world”. Starmer and Trump “agreed to stay in touch in the coming days”. Elon Musk gave out $1m checks on Sunday to two Wisconsin voters, declaring them spokespeople for his political group, ahead of a Wisconsin supreme court election that the tech billionaire cast as critical to Trump’s agenda and “the future of civilization”. Musk and groups he supports have spent more than $20m to help conservative favourite Brad Schimel in Tuesday’s race, which will determine the ideological makeup of a court likely to decide key issues in a perennial battleground state. Republican John Dean, former White House counsel to Richard Nixon as president, who was jailed for his involvement in the cover-up of Watergate and later testified to Congress as a witness for the investigation into the scandal, criticized Trump’s apparent aspiration for a third term, in an interview with CNN. “He likes constitutional end-runs…and that’s what seems to be on his mind is how he can get around the very clear language of the 22nd Amendment [to the US Constitution], which precludes getting elected to more than two terms,” Dean said. CNN asked, if there are ways to get around the law, constitutionally what could those be? Dean said: “They would have to be written by the Supreme Court, that would redefine the constitution. I just describe it as a constitutional end run.” An end run is an American football term for the ball-carrier running around the end of the defensive line in their attempt to reach the line to score a touchdown. The key line from the 22nd Amendment, forbidding anyone who has been elected president twice from being elected again. reads: “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.” The US Congress approved the amendment in 1947, and submitted it to the state legislatures, where it was then ratified in 1951. Previous presidents had not had term limits. The first and third US presidents, George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, established the tradition, however, of opting not to run for re-election after serving two terms. Franklin Roosevelt was elected for a third and fourth term, in 1940 and 1944 and FDR’s decisions heightened concerns about the presidency not being subject to term limits. Critics attack Trump notion of serving third term Donald Trump’s repeated musings that there is scope for breaking with the US Constitution’s explicit ban on running for a third term in office is attracting critics from some in both parties. Changing the the Constitution so that it no longer forbids a third term is a very high hurdle to leap over. You need a two-thirds majority vote in the US Congress or two-thirds of US states agreeing to convent a constitutional convention at which an amendment would be proposed, NBC reports. Then agreement from such a vote would need to be ratified by three-quarters of the states. Trump talked about a possible third term before he was inaugurated and has brought it up at least twice more since he became the 47th president of the United States, in a return to the White House that has shaken American government to its core.
That would be completely unfair, only non-consecutively elected presidents can do this. And then presidents who were single + consecutive after that.
Once Trump gets a third term, he'll be there until he's dead. Whether his death will happen naturally or by force, you'll just have to find out yourself.