Trump says he is not joking about third presidential term
reuters.com
reuters.com
If he's still alive and even semi cogent in 2028, he's going to run for another term, whether or not the constitution allows it. He will do everything he possibly can to remain in power for as long as he's alive.
Also, he has literally said he will ignore the courts. His administration already has with the deportations now. He has said that he will invade other countries. He has taken over power of the purse and nobody has stopped it. And he has congress, like Mike Johnson, saying they should dissolve the federal courts. He wields all enforcement arms of the government - what are they gonna do? Write another stern letter as his gestapo send them to El Salvador?
At least, not as long as John Roberts is alive. If he dies or retires, all bets are off.
I think he is completely prepared to work around them. The Republican party nominates him, he appears on the ballot in ~28 states, wins the election, and the Congress approves it. Roberts may not show up to administer the oath, but he's not going to make a statement against it. When he appoints new members, they'll be approved by Congress, and the court will accept them as valid because what else are they gonna do.
Somebody will surely sue -- but dollars to donuts they'll claim whoever it is won't have standing.
It's really a shame seeing how many school kids had to die for this supposedly necessary right - decades of pretending that it was a necessary cost to protect the US against tyranny.
[1] https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2024/07/24/key-facts...
the anti-MAGA-action crowd still has not given up on the 1st Amendment, to the chagrin of the world and 2/3 of the US population.
far too many think that retweets or FB posts constitute action
The Second Amendment was intended to support fending off foreign invaders -- that whole "well regulated militia" thing. There wasn't a standing army at the time. As soon as we got one, the "second amendment" became moot.
The army is going to be extremely reluctant to fire on Americans. But if you come at them with a gun, they'll do it. You don't have even a billionth of their firepower.
The US currently has a president who tries to be a dictator, but that's not the same thing. And it has a congress that doesn't bother to check the president, but that's still not a dictatorship. And, as someone who lives in the US, the difference really matters.
The difference between this and a real dictatorship is the courts. If we lose that, we're in trouble.
They already ignored a judges's order https://www.axios.com/2025/03/16/trump-white-house-defy-judg...
We don’t have to lose the courts to be in trouble, especially when the executive simply flouts inconvenient court orders with impunity.
We have a functional dictatorship with institutions which on paper have the authority and responsibility for constraining it which are either inactive because they tacitly support both the goals and dictatorial methods of the dictatorship (Congress) or too often, but not entirely, ineffective when they act (the courts). The difference between this and strongly-established dictatorship without a surviving formal basis for constraint is small and, historically, sometimes crossed rapidly and with very little additional warning.
If you mean that he's succeeded in making what he wanted happen despite the court order, then not so fast. We're still thrashing through the process of determining whether he will succeed in doing that.
I agree that he is dangerously close to running over the last remaining checks and balances.
How many times can the Republicans "stop time" on appeals to executive orders?
They've already done this once to stop dead appeals to the courts in regards the "emergency tariff" executive orders with a simple rider to declare that "Each day [..] shall not constitute a calendar day" and thus bypassing a constraint that demanded an appeal be heard within a fixed number of calendar days.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43358343
Is there no limit to checking the legal checks and balances and rendering them moot?
That ‘yet’ is doing a lot of heavy lifting, really. For practical purposes he can’t be removed from office. Like, at this point, it’s hard to come to any conclusion but that the system has failed.
Trump admin has ignored judge's orders regarding deportation. https://abcnews.go.com/US/trump-admin-ignores-judges-order-b...
Trump and his partners are already ignoring the courts, so by your own definition we're in big trouble.
Does it though? If it quacks like a dictator and everybody lets him, it sounds like a dictatorship to me. Are you waiting for him to say "I declare this government to be a dictatorship" for it to be official? When the courts either ignore his illegal executive orders or make them legal, will you just say "well it's legal so not a dictatorship"? The red line you have in mind doesn't exist, because dictatorships are insidious.
The Legislature creates the laws.
The Judicial interprets those laws.
The Executive carries out and acts on those laws.
It doesn't matter what the courts say if no one is willing to enforce it, or actively tries not to.
This eventually leads to a "make me" moment, such as when DOGE showed up and physically started pushing people out.
Ultimately this is a "the state is the monopoly of violence" discussion, which is the ultimate form of "make me". If no one is enforcing a court ruling, then someone will have to step up, to either carry it out, or to compel the Executive to do so.
https://www.axios.com/2025/03/16/trump-white-house-defy-judg...
I concur that there is still, barely, a difference between this and a dictatorship. But it's really, really, really tiny, and can vanish on a moment's notice. We're "in trouble" now.
A republic is an empire of laws, not men.
This executive is insisting he doesn't have to follow laws he doesn't personally like. A retroactive veto. It's contrary to the oath of office, and the duty to uphold the law. It's stated in the text.
This Congress is already merely decoration, serving an emperor, not their state's interests.
We have many examples of dictatorships with functioning courts.
change from relying solely on the First Amendment.
If you're suggesting that they rely on the Second... well, that's a lot to ask. I'm not saying you're wrong, if indeed all those amendments do fail, especially that last. But I think most people would rather the save the "fourth box" for last.
Or he's going to ignore the constitution. That seems much more likely.
It also seems almost certain to trigger a civil war.
Currently, Trump is the president. He's even my president. I don't like him much, I think he's making very foolish decisions, but he's my president.
But he's not my king. And if he tries to stay in power in violation of the constitution, he won't be my president, either, because it's the constitution that makes him president. If he's outside that, then he's not the president.
the right wing nutjobs weren't wrong about defending your rights by force if necessary. it's just that their "rights" included KKK ideology, and poor licensing rules for firearms that made it easy to shoot up elementary schools.
Everything Trump promised (or did not promise) and did is totally fine, constitutional, and legal, and Democrats are a problem for not understanding it's basically the same thing as (some Clinton era policy which is clearly not related at all).
The moment Trump runs for his third term, every Trump supporter will find reasons why this is OK. To them, having an argument is like schoolyard bullying: consistency is for losers.
Wish I could bury my head in the sand as easily.
If anything, it just depresses me (and yet I keep going to /active to find them).
Don't get me wrong, I've learned a bunch from these threads too, but there is a lot of anger, frustration and hatred in these threads, so I can definitely see why people tend to flag them (even though I don't do so myself).
> “There are methods which you could do it,” the president said when asked whether there are strategies on the table to allow him to seek another term. Welker mentioned a possible plan in which Vice President JD Vance would run in 2028 and then “pass the baton” to Trump. “Well, that’s one. But there are others too,” the president said, before refusing to elaborate.
The other method of course, is to not have an election at all! Why risk losing?
Anyone who thinks there is going to be a presidential election in 2028 hasn't been paying attention. There is no way Trump is going to that risk. He doesn't have to. All checks and balances have been suppressed already.
Curious how they’d do this. The Twelfth Amendment states that “no person constitutionally ineligible to the office of President shall be eligible to that of Vice-President of the United States” [1].
Simplest would be to elect two randos, have the House choose Trump as Speaker [2], then have the randos resign [3].
[1] https://constitution.congress.gov/constitution/amendment-12/
[2] https://www.cbsnews.com/news/house-speaker-non-member-of-con...
It also just jumps ahead of where we are in reality. You could just as easily say "of course Trump is going to execute his political enemies on the lawn of the White House, because all the checks and balances that would prevent that have been removed!" Yes, that could happen, just like us not having an election in 2028 could happen, but that's a massive change that would effectively be the end of the republic, the end of the constitution, and likely result in a full-blown civil war. We may get there, but we are nowhere close to that yet.
> Constitutional Amendment: The U.S. Constitution can be amended by an act of Congress. Republicans must publicly get behind the third-term project.
> Running as Vice President: President Trump can run as Vice President with a space filler as President in 2028. Perhaps Donald Trump Jr. could run on a Trump/Trump ticket before gracefully resigning on Jan. 21, 2028 after securing victory. This plan while unorthodox would show that MAGA cannot be stopped by any procedural rule.
> Supreme Court Ruling: The 22nd Amendment bans anyone from serving two terms in office, but it is not completely clear if that refers to two presidential terms under any circumstances or two consecutive presidential terms. There are legal challenges in the works to clear up the ambiguity regarding the 22nd Amendment. The conservative rule-of-law justices on the Supreme Court would be able to settle this once and for all, making it clear that the 22nd Amendment would allow Trump a third term as it would only be his second consecutive term.
No, it can't. If 2/3 of the House & Senate agree, they can propose an amendment to send to the states. It then takes 3/4 of states ratifying it to actually amend the Constitution.
> Running as Vice President: President Trump can run as Vice President with a space filler as President in 2028.
The 12th Amendment likely bars that, because of the 22nd. If you're not eligible to to be President, you aren't eligible to be Vice President either.
> but it is not completely clear if that refers to two presidential terms under any circumstances or two consecutive presidential term
This is just plain nonsense. They might as well argue that it doesn't make it clear whether two is a number or not.
This whole thing is silly. Let's not forget that amending this would mean Obama would be eligible to run again.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twenty-second_Amendment_to_the...
Representative Andy Ogles put forward a proposal that would have kept Obama from running again, but allow Trump a third term. It would be a funny joke in a TV show, it's sad that someone wasted actual time on it though.
There are, though. No need to act naive.
I support President Trump, but I don't support a third term and he wouldn't be able to pull it off (on the basis that a third term is not a good precedent).
The 22nd Amendment clearly states you can't be elected more than twice, not that you can't serve as President more than twice.
The earlier draft of the amendment was that you cannot serve as President more than twice. The "elected" language was intentional.
Why? I'm genuinely curious.
Laws and amendments aren’t just technicalities they only work because we as a society agree to follow not just the literal wording but the intent behind them. The "spirit of the law" the idea that power should be limited, that no one person should rule indefinitely, and that the Constitution sets boundaries we all agree to honor. If someone is already trying to twist the wording of the 22nd Amendment to find a loophole that’s a clear sign they’re not acting in good faith.
If you don't care when a President shows he doesn’t care about the spirit of the Constitution why would caring about precedent be a thing for you? Precedent is way down the line from keeping to the spirit of the Constitution. China has a constitution that guarantees democracy and free speech. Like Trump and your 'elected' workaround, the reality of their constitution is much different, all with China keeping closely to precedent.
and now you're P again
Or simply resigns.
“ But no person constitutionally ineligible to the office of President shall be eligible to that of Vice-President of the United States.”
One would be causing red states to vote their Electors for Big Bird or whatever, thereby ensuring that “no Person have a Majority” of electoral votes [1], thus punting the Presidency to the House. (That or having Vance just throw out “bad” votes, again, throwing the election to the House.)
[1] https://constitution.congress.gov/constitution/article-2/