Robert De Niro has a theory that Donald Trump, should he survive the process that seeks to impeach him and remove him from office, and should he get reelected in 2020 for a second term, will try to get himself a third term, The Daily Beast reports.
De Niro says that he got the idea from The Irishman director Martin Scorsese, who apparently believes the same thing. Their theory is that, as his second term is ending, Trump will start taking steps to give himself a third term. To do that, he says that the Trump administration will find a reason to start a war.
“I think that if he became president for a second term he’d try to have a third term, and let smarter people manipulate it into getting us into some kind of altercation: a war,” De Niro said.
De Niro then went on to point out that the only other president to serve more than two terms was Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who was, indeed, president during World War II.
However, at the time, the Constitution didn’t put any limits on how many terms a president could serve. After the Roosevelt administration, however, the 22nd Amendment was ratified, effectively limiting a president to two terms.
War or no war, allowing Donald Trump to have a third term would require either the 22nd Amendment being overturned or for all three branches of the government and the American people to ignore the Constitution.
De Niro notes, however, that Trump has been dropping hints that he has eyes on being president beyond what the Constitution allows.
For example, as De Niro points out, Trump “joked” with Chinese President Xi Jinping about how he admires Xi’s status as “President For Life,” saying, “maybe we’ll have to give that a shot some day.”
Similarly, as reported by The Inquisitr , in a June 16 tweet Trump suggested that, after a second term, perhaps the American people would want him to “stay longer.”
Whether or not Trump was really joking when he made these claims about being interested in being in office beyond two terms has been the subject of intense media speculation every time he’s made them. Of course, only Donald Trump knows for certain whether or not he was actually joking.
Further, there seems to be little to no interest in amending the Constitution to allow Trump to serve more than two terms. Amending the Constitution is a long and arduous process that takes years, and as of this writing, no legislator in either party has given any indication that they’re interested in starting the process.