Donald Trump said that there are “methods” – if not “plans” – to bypass the constitutional limit preventing American presidents from serving three terms.
In an interview broadcast on Sunday on NBC, Trump was asked about his attempt to remain in office beyond his second presidency, a specter that he raised several times while sometimes claiming that he is joking.
Trump told Kristen Welker host “There are methods that you could do” – and this time made a duty to say that he was not joking.
“Well, there are plans,” Trump told Welker. “There are – no plans. There are methods – there are methods that you could do, as you know. ”
Welker alluded to an alleged escape that some supporters of Trump fantasized about the research in which he could be the packaging of his vice-president, JD Vance, or someone else in the 2028 elections. The person to whom Trump would be the package in this scenario could then resign immediately after winning and being sworn as president, letting Trump take over.
Their argument would be that the 22nd amendment of the Constitution explicitly prohibits being “elected” more than two presidential terms without saying anything to become the commander -in -chief on an additional opportunity thanks to the succession.
Vance did not indicate that he wanted to participate in such a plan. And a professor of electoral law at Notre Dame, Derek Muller, told the Associated Press that the 12th Amendment of the Constitution says: “No person is ineligible to the Office of President 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-presidency.
“I don’t think there is” a strange tip “to get around the limits of the presidential term,” said Muller.
Nevertheless, Welker theorized that Vance could somehow “pass the stick” to Trump.
Trump replied: “Well, that’s one.”
“But there are others too. There are others. “
When he pushed to detail these methods, Trump said: “No.”
Trump then said that he was “far too early to think” to try to challenge the presidential term limit of the Constitution to stay in office and that he was “concentrated on the current”. But asked if being president a third time would be too much work, he said: “I like to work.”
And asked him if he joked, like him and his supporters like to say whenever he floats anti-constitutional ideas, he said: “No, no, I’m not kidding. I’m not kidding.”
Trump’s comments occurred after having previously compared to a “king” – the royal title without mandate limits – on social networks.
In February, he caused a general outcry when he went to Truth Social following his decree for New York to cancel his pricing program for congestion and wrote: “The price of congestion is dead. Manhattan, and all New York, is saved. Live the King! “
The White House then shared Trump’s quote on social networks, accompanied by a computer -generated image of the smiling president on a false cover of Time magazine while wearing a golden crown, behind the horizon of New York.
Meanwhile, the republican member of the American Chamber Andy Ogles of Tennessee presented a resolution in January expressing his support for the modification of the Constitution to allow a president to serve up to three terms – under the condition of not having served two consecutive conditions.
Barack Obama, Bill Clinton and George W Bush – who all served two consecutive terms – could not ask for a third term as part of an amendment like that posed by Ogles, which would be practically no chance of passing. Only Trump would be eligible for a third term because he won the presidency in 2016 and November 2024 but lost in 2020 against Joe Biden.
Nevertheless, all members of the Republican Party led by Trump are not on board the idea of changing the Constitution to let the president stay in power beyond the end of his second term at the beginning of 2029. After the comments of the “king” of Trump in February, the American republican senator Markwayne Mullin of Oklahoma would not support a non-passive third term under Trump.
“I do not change the Constitution, first of all, unless the American people have chosen to do so,” Mullin told NBC.
To modify the limits of the presidential mandate, it would be the approval of two thirds of the Senate and the Chamber, as well as the approval of three -quarters of the legislatures of the country’s states. Trump catalysts do not have the figures required in these different contexts to easily obtain this democratically approval.
The 22nd amendment was ratified after Franklin D Roosevelt served two terms after his election in 1932 – and was then re -elected in 1940 and 1944 in the middle of the Second World War. He died as president in 1945 and the 22nd amendment was ratified in 1951.
