Trump’s attempt to serve a third term in office is a ‘pipe dream,’ legal scholars say

The News

US President Donald Trump said he was “not joking” about seeking a third term, despite it being barred by the Constitution.

Trump told NBC News on Sunday that “a lot of people” wanted him to run again in 2028, and that there were “methods” to sidestep the two-term limit.

Trump has previously joked about running a third time, but the latest remarks — which follow comments likening himself to a king — are the most serious.

To change the term limits, Trump would need a two-thirds vote of Congress and the backing of 38 states, although he discussed a dubious option of running for vice president with a running mate who would step aside upon winning.

SIGNALS

Some Trump moves signal democratic backsliding, but most are ‘standard’ Republican ideas

“Under Donald Trump, the US is sliding into a form of authoritarianism” in which formal democratic institutions are preserved even as their democratic substance erodes, Harvard Professor Steven Levitsky told Der Spiegel, arguing that Trump and his backers are emulating Hungarian leader Viktor Orbán’s model of weaponizing the state. Trump’s moves – including his purge of oversight officials, his pardoning of the Capitol Hill rioters, and his war on universities — “have ticked nearly every box on the scholarly checklist of democratic backsliding,” the Financial Times’ US national editor wrote. Still, “not every Trump move is authoritarian,” conservative think tank R Street Institute noted: Many of Trump’s policies are “standard Republican policy ideas,” and executive overreach by both parties “is not new.”

US opposition has been slow to respond to Trump

Democratic backsliding is difficult to arrest, two political scientists wrote in Foreign Affairs: Would-be authoritarians often employ “soft” forms of repression — including criminal investigations — to ramp up the cost of resistance. So far, however, the opposition’s response to Trump’s threat “has been underwhelming,” an academic argued: “This delay is costly” since opposition groups that fail to push back early tend to lose their hold of key institutional levers. Trump’s opponents should “adopt the viewpoint of dissident movements in autocratic states” like the protestors in Serbia, The Bulwark wrote. A former Barack Obama adviser suggested that Democrats “must become a movement out in the country rather than a party trying to discover a formula in Washington.”

Constitutional scholars skeptical of loopholes in allowing third term

Legal scholars are skeptical about loopholes that would allow Trump to serve a third term in office. The “high bar for constitutional amendments” — like those required to repeal the 22nd Amendment prohibiting presidents from seeking more than two consecutive or nonconsecutive terms — makes the prospect of a constitutionally sanctioned third term “a pipe dream,” the BBC wrote. Other possible loopholes haven’t been tested in courts, and seeking a third term through “an unelected route” — like the vice presidency — “would be fraught with legal and political risks,” a constitutional law expert told The Washington Post. “The Constitution is rarely as clear about anything as it is” about prohibiting presidents from serving more than two terms, a law professor said.