Trump says he is considering means to serve a third term as president – Orange County Register

By Chris Megerian

West Palm Beach, Florida (AP) – President Donald Trump said on Sunday that “I am not kidding” about the tension to serve a 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 that you could do,” said Trump in a telephone interview with NBC News in Mar-A-Lago, his private club.

He also said: “It is far too early to think about it.”

The 22nd amendment, added to the Constitution in 1951 after President Franklin D. Roosevelt was elected four times in a row, said: “No one will be elected to the president’s office more than twice.”

Any attempt to stay in office would be legally suspicious and we do not know how Trump could continue the idea. The comments were nevertheless an extraordinary reflection of the desire to maintain power by a president who had violated democratic traditions four years ago when he tried to overthrow the elections he lost against the Democrat Joe Biden.

Jeremy Paul, professor of constitutional law at the Northeast University of Boston, said: “There are no credible legal arguments for a third term.”

NBC Kristen Welker asked Trump if a potential avenue to a third term was to have the vice-president JD Vance Run for the first 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.

“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 Notre Dame, noted that the 12th amendment, which was ratified in 1804, said: “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 get around the limits of the presidential term,” said Muller.

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.

He suggested that Trump talks about a third term for political reasons to “show as much force 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.

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 to have “the greatest number of polls in the past 100 years”.

Gallup’s data shows that President George W. Bush reached a 90% approval rating after the attacks of September 11, 2001. His father, President George HW Bush, struck 89% after the Gulf War in 1991.

Trump reached a maximum of 47% in Gallup data during his second term, although he claimed to be “in the 1970s in many polls, in real polls”.

Trump has already thought about the purge of more than two terms before, 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 – the president of the House Mike Johnson, R -La., The Democratic leader of the Hakeem Chamber Jeffries of New York, the head of the majority of the Senate John Thune, Rs.d., and the Democratic leader of the Senate Chuck Schumer of New York – did not immediately respond to the requests for AP comments.