Can Trump serve a third term as American president?

Donald Trump said he “does not like” about wanting to serve a third term as American president.

The American Constitution says that “nobody … will be elected more than twice”, but some supporters of Trump have suggested that there could be ways to get around this.

Asked in an interview with NBC on the possibility of looking for a third mandate in the White House, Trump said that “there are methods you could do”.

“I’m not kidding … Many people want me to do it,” he added. “But, I essentially tell them that we have a long way to go, you know, it is very early in the administration.”

Trump, who would be 82 years old at the end of his second term, was asked if he wanted to continue serving “the most difficult work in the country”.

“Well, I like to work,” he replied.

These are not his first comments on the subject. In January, He said to the supporters that it would be “the greatest honor of my life to serve not one, but two or three times or four times”. However, he then said it was a joke for “false information media”.

At first glance, the American Constitution seems to exclude anyone who has a third term. The 22nd amendment indicates:

“No one will be elected to the president’s office more than twice, and no one who has held the post of president, or acted as president, for more than two years of a mandate to which another person has been elected president will be elected to the president’s office more than once.”

The modification of the constitution would require two -thirds approval of the Senate and the House of Representatives, as well as the approval of three -quarters of governments at the level of the country’s state.

Trump’s Republican Party controls the two chambers of the congress but does not have a necessary majority. In addition, the Democratic Party controls 18 of the 50 legislative assemblies of the States.

Trump supporters say there is an escape in the Constitution, not tested in court.

They argue that the 22nd amendment explicitly prohibits a “elected” person to more than two presidential conditions – and says nothing “succession”.

According to this theory, Trump could be the vice-presidential-race for another candidate-perhaps his own vice-president, JD Vance-in the 2028 elections.

If they win, the candidate could be sworn in in the White House, then resign immediately – let Trump take over by succession.

Steve Bannon, the podcaster and former Trump advisor, said he thought Trump “would run and win again”, adding that there were “a few alternatives” to determine how.

Andy Ogles, a republican from Tennessee to the House of Representatives, presented a resolution in January calling for a constitutional amendment to allow a president to serve up to three terms – as long as they were not consecutive.

This would mean that only Trump of all the former surviving presidents would be eligible – Barack Obama, Bill Clinton and George W Bush all served consecutive conditions, while Trump won in 2016, lost in 2020 and won again in 2024.

However, the high bar of constitutional amendments makes the Ogles proposal a pipe dream – although he made people speak.

Democrats have deep objections.

“This is another climbing in its clear effort to take over the government and dismantle our democracy,” said Daniel Goldman, a New York representative who was a principal lawyer for Trump’s first indictment.

“If the Republicans of Congress believe in the Constitution, they will go to the file opposing Trump’s ambitions for a third term.”

Some within Trump also think it’s a bad idea.

Republican senator Markwayne Mullin, Oklahoma, said in February that he would not support an attempt to put Trump back to the White House.

“I do not change the Constitution, first of all, unless the American people have chosen to do so,” Mullin told NBC.

Derek Muller, professor of electoral law at the University of Notre Dame, said that the 12th amendment to the Constitution indicates “that no one is ineligible to the president’s office will be eligible for that of the vice-president of the United States”.

This means serving two mandates in the office disqualifies anyone to present themselves as a vice-presidential candidate, in his opinion.

“I don’t think there is” a strange tip “to bypass the limits of the presidential term,” he said.

Jeremy Paul, professor of constitutional law at the Northeast University of Boston, told CBS New that there were “no credible legal arguments” for a third term.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt was elected four times. He died three months after his fourth term in April 1945.

The great depression and the Second World War have colored Roosevelt time in office – and are often cited for its prolonged presidency.

At that time, the limit of two mandates to the American presidents had not been registered – it was rather a custom followed since George Washington refused a third term in 1796.

The prolonged management of Roosevelt led the tradition codified in the 22nd amendment in the early 1950s.