What Donald Trump Has Said About Seeking A Third Term Over The Months And Years
President Trump this week once again teased the possibility of seeking a third term in office. In an interview, he said he “probably” would not run again, but immediately added, “I’d like to run.”
This comment is the latest in a long series of “jokes,” musings, and suggestions that he might seek to defy the constitutional limit of two terms.
While his allies may dismiss this as the President simply having fun with the media, this is no laughing matter. When a sitting President repeatedly questions a clear, unambiguous limit on his own power, it is a serious and corrosive act. This is not just a political tactic; it is a test of one of our most important constitutional guardrails, the 22nd Amendment.
The 22nd Amendment: A Guardrail Against an Imperial Presidency
To understand the gravity of this issue, we must first understand the history. For the first 150 years of the republic, a two-term limit was a sacred, but unwritten, tradition established by George Washington. After Franklin D. Roosevelt shattered that tradition by winning four terms, a broad, bipartisan consensus emerged that the concentration of power in one person for too long was a threat to the republic.
The result was the 22nd Amendment, ratified in 1951. Its language is not a suggestion; it is a command:
“No person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice…”
This amendment is a constitutional guardrail. It was deliberately put in place to prevent the rise of a “president for life” and to ensure the periodic renewal of our democratic leadership.
A Pattern of Testing the Boundaries
The President’s comments on a third term have evolved from a recurring joke at rallies to something more serious. In March, he told an interviewer he was “not joking” and that “there are methods which you could do it.” This suggestion that there are secret “loopholes” or “methods” to get around a clear constitutional prohibition is a dangerous flirtation with lawlessness.
Even if, as some allies suggest, this is merely a political tactic to avoid becoming a “lame duck,” it is a tactic that comes at a high constitutional cost. The repeated questioning of a clear limit on his own power normalizes the idea that the Constitution is not a set of fixed rules to be obeyed, but a series of inconvenient obstacles to be overcome.
The “Lame-Duck” and the Constitution’s Intent
The desire to avoid “lame-duck” status – where a second-term president’s political power wanes as their term nears its end – is understandable. However, the 22nd Amendment was specifically designed to create a lame-duck period.
The drafters of the amendment made a conscious constitutional trade-off. They believed that the risk of a president consolidating power over more than eight years was a far greater threat to the republic than the risk of that president having diminished political influence in their final years.
The President’s desire to avoid this status is a direct challenge to the very purpose and wisdom of this constitutional guardrail.
While the legal and practical barriers to a third term are, for now, insurmountable, the President’s continued flirtation with the idea is not harmless. Constitutional norms are like a fortress wall; they are only as strong as the willingness of our leaders to respect them. Each “joke” about a third term, each suggestion that “there are methods,” is a small but significant crack in that wall. The ultimate danger is not that the President will actually serve a third term, but that he will leave the constitutional prohibition against it weaker and more contested than he found it.