Donald Trump Deserves A Third Term, Say Some Supporters, But That’s Not Actually Possible
Donald Trump deserves a third term, say some supporters, because he’s accomplished so much in his 2.5 years in office, and could still accomplish considerably more if Democrats “would just get out of the way,” Yahoo News reports.
Trump officially kicked off his 2020 re-election campaign at an Orlando rally Tuesday night. There, a reporter caught up with Trump supporters, and their message was largely unanimous: that Trump has made great accomplishments in his brief time in office, and that he could do even more with a second term.
Some supporters, however, suggested going even further: if Trump could get a third term, they’d be all about it.
“Maybe the Democrats would get it right during the third term and leave him alone so he could do even more,” said one supporter.
Is Trump Eyeing A Third Term?
It’s a suggestion that Trump himself has made more than once in his time in office. As CNN reported earlier this week, Trump has repeatedly “joked” about wanting a third term as president. For example, in a tweet on Sunday, Trump obliquely suggested that he’d be interested in staying in office beyond the two terms that the Constitution allows.
“The good news is that at the end of 6 years, after America has been made GREAT again and I leave the beautiful White House (do you think the people would demand that I stay longer?)” he wrote.
His 76-minute speech featured more than 15 false statements, many of them ones that he's repeated frequently in the past. Here's a fact check. https://t.co/FCSGvbKo9H
— CNN (@CNN) June 19, 2019
It wasn’t the first time he’s “joked” about such a thing. In 2018, after meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping, Trump seemed to admire the fact that Xi is “president for life.”
“Maybe we’ll have to give that a shot someday.”
The Constitution Says Otherwise
According to the 22nd Amendment, the POTUS can only serve two 4-year terms in office. The amendment was put into place in 1947, after Franklin Delano Roosevelt had served four terms.
For Trump to serve more than two terms in office would require a constitutional amendment either repealing the 22nd amendment or further amending it. However, the Constitution makes it difficult for itself to be amended; any change to the document must first be called for by two-thirds of the voting members of both chambers of Congress, or two-thirds of the state legislatures, according to The National Archives.
Any resolution to call for amending the 22nd amendment, with a view towards affording Trump a third term, would almost certainly be dead on arrival in the House of Representatives. Even in the Republican-controlled Senate, there may not be the 67 votes required to pass such a measure. Similarly, the political will to proceed with such an amendment does not appear to be present among 34 of the 50 state legislatures.
Even then, once the amendment is proposed, actually getting it passed requires three-quarters (38) of the 50-state legislatures to approve it.
The Constitution has only been amended 27 times since its ratification in 1789, and the first 10 of those — the Bill of Rights — were all added at once. Excluding the Bill of Rights, that means that the Constitution has only been successfully amended 17 times in nearly 250 years.
