US President Donald Trump said on Sunday that “I am not kidding” about the attempted third term, the clearest indication that he plans to violate a constitutional barrier against the continuation of directing the country after the end of his second term in early 2029.
“There are methods you could do,” said Trump in a telephone interview with NBC News. He also said that “he is far too early to think about it”.
The 22nd amendment, added to the American Constitution in 1951 after Franklin D. Roosevelt was elected president four times in a row, said “no one will be elected to the president’s office more than twice”.
Possible execution as VP?
NBC Kristen Welker asked Trump if a potential avenue to a third term was to have the vice-president JD Vance Run for the best job and “then pass the stick”.
“Well, that’s one,” said Trump. “But there are others too. There are others.”
“Can you tell me another?” Welker asked in the interview early in the morning, before Trump left his seaside resort from Mar-A-Lago to Palm Beach, Florida, to spend the day to his nearby golf course.
“No,” replied Trump.
The Vance office did not immediately respond to a request for comments from the Associated Press.
Derek Muller, professor of law of elections at the University of Notre Dame, noted that the 12th amendment, which was ratified in 1804, said that “no one is ineligible to the president’s office will be eligible for that of the vice-president of the United States”.
Muller said that this indicates that if Trump is not eligible for the presidency again due to the 22nd amendment, he is not eligible for the vice-president either.
“I don’t think there is” a strange tip “to bypass the limits of the presidential term,” he said.
In addition, the pursuit of a third term would require extraordinary acquiescence by federal and state officials, not to mention the courts and voters themselves.
Muller suggested that Trump is talking about a third term for political reasons to “show as much strength as possible”.
“A lame President of Donald Trump has all the incentives in the world to give the impression that he is not a lame duck,” he said.
‘I like to work’
Trump, who is said to be 82 at the end of his second term, was asked if he wanted to continue serving “the most difficult work in the country” at that time.
“Well, I like to work,” said the president.
He suggested that the Americans would accompany a third term because of its popularity. He wrongly claimed that he had “the greatest number of republican surveys in the past 100 years”.
Gallup’s data show that the president of the time, George W. Bush, reached a 90% approval rating after terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001. His father, President George HW Bush, struck 89% after the Gulf War in 1991.
Trump reached 47% in Gallup data during his second term, despite the alleged “in the 1970s in many polls, in real polls”.
He has already thought about more than two mandates, generally with jokes to a friendly audience.
“Am I allowed to run again?” He declared during a republican retirement from the house in January.
Representatives of the Congress Directorate – Republican President of the Chamber Mike Johnson, the Democratic leader of the Hakeem Jeffries Chamber, the head of the majority of the Republican Senate John Thune and the Democratic leader of the Senate Chuck Schumer – did not immediately respond to AP’s requests for comments.
