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When Lyndon B. Johnson wanted to take his hat out of the ring in 1968, he said this during a nationally televised address:
“I shall not seek, and I will not accept, the nomination of my party for another term as your president.”
Those comments, issued during the primary season, upended the 1968 presidential election, which ultimately ended with Richard Nixon’s win.
Compare Johnson’s clear statement with Trump’s latest tease about a third term:
“I haven’t really thought about it,” Trump told reporters. “We have some very good people, as you know,” he said, referring to potential successors Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio.
“But,” Trump added, “I have the best poll numbers I’ve ever had.”
His approval rating is actually consistently under 50%. And while Johnson was well within his rights to run again in 1968, Trump is expressly forbidden by the 22nd Amendment from seeking a third term at the ballot box.
His answer wended on from there. He both bragged about his own accomplishments and talked about the unstoppable team that Vance and Rubio, who was standing next to him, could form.
There’s one thing Trump said he won’t do
Trump did rule out one proposed end-run around the Constitution, saying it would be “too cute” for him to run as vice president in order to later ascend back into the White House after the elected president resigned.
“I think the people wouldn’t like that because it’s too cute. It’s not — it wouldn’t be right,” he said, although he tried to reserve the legal right to do it.
“You’d be allowed to do that, but I wouldn’t,” he said.
Nobody wants to be a lame duck
CNN’s Aaron Blake wrote about the many reasons Trump won’t let this kind of talk die — among them, relevance and fear of becoming a lame duck.
Those are important points, but the fact also remains that one of Trump’s most committed allies, the provocateur Steve Bannon, keeps talking about keeping Trump in office.
Bannon told Bloomberg there is a plan brewing to do just that, although he declined to share specifics.
Bannon was among those who helped push the idea that Trump should stay in office in 2021 after losing the 2020 election, so he (and Trump) have a track record of trying to follow through on things that seem, on their face, obviously unconstitutional.
That doesn’t seem to bother Bannon, who currently has no official White House role.
“Trump is going to be president in ‘28 and people just ought to get accommodated with that,” Bannon said.
Trump’s administration has, however, undertaken audacious efforts to change the political system. Just look at the pressure on red states to redraw congressional lines in Republicans’ favor before next year’s midterm elections.
The constitutional barriers
There has been plenty written, including here, about the unlikelihood that holes that could poked in the 22nd Amendment, which was passed after Franklin D. Roosevelt died in office in his fourth term, and bars two-term presidents from being elected again.
It reads, very simply:
No person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice, and no person who has held the office of President, or acted as President, for more than two years of a term to which some other person was elected President shall be elected to the office of the President more than once.
The idea to elect Trump as vice president — beyond being “too cute” — also runs into problems with the 12th Amendment, which includes this line:
But no person constitutionally ineligible to the office of President shall be eligible to that of Vice-President of the United States.
Could both the president AND vice president resign to make room for Trump 3.0? That sounds like a plot line ripped from Russia, where President Vladimir Putin sidestepped constitutional term limits by having a trusted deputy, Dmitry Medvedev, serve in his place for one term. Russian law has since been changed, which could allow Putin to stay in power into the 2030s.
Trump would have more trouble changing the 22nd Amendment, which would require the assent of three-quarters of US states, something that seems impossible in the current political climate.
Trump is already the oldest elected president and will be 82 when his second term expires in January of 2029. In the same Air Force One appearance where he did not rule out a third term, he also told reporters he had recently undergone an MRI and cognitive tests at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center. He did not share more details, but said he is in great health.
Questions about the health of a man approaching his 80s will only increase in the years to come.
The SCOTUS factor
CNN senior political commentator Scott Jennings told CNN’s Abby Phillip on Friday that Republicans would largely oppose a Trump attempt to cling to end-run around the Constitution and stay in power.
So ignore all of those 2028 hats Trump displays, according to Jennings.
“He’s trolling his opponents and he knows how crazy it drives them when he does these kinds of things,” he said.
Trump, in that vein, was cagey when a reporter asked, given his “too cute” dismissal of the idea to run for vice president, if he was ruling out a third term.
“Am I not ruling it out? You’ll have to tell me,” Trump said.
As long as people like Bannon are talking seriously about a “plan” and as long as Trump continues to troll, talk of a third-term effort must be taken very seriously by everyone else.
If Trump did try, somehow, to stay in office, it would undoubtedly reach the Supreme Court. One of the three justices he nominated, Amy Coney Barrett, agreed with the plain and obvious reading that the 22nd Amendment bars a third term for anyone.
“That’s what the amendment says,” she told Fox News earlier this year.
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