Trump’s third term threats are not a distraction
They are yet another authoritarian attack on the Constitution.
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Donald Trump has been saying he wants to run for a third term, and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries thinks he knows why.
The stock market is plunging; Americans are worried that Trump’s policies, including the self-destructive tariffs regime he announced yesterday, are going to spark a recession; Trump’s disapproval just topped 50 percent; Republicans are putting up bad showings in recent elections.
“It was a terrible week [for the GOP],” Jeffries argued during a news conference yesterday. “So what happens on Sunday? Trump says, intentionally, 'I'm serious about running for a third term.' He can't run for a third term! ... why does he say it? ... to distract from the terrible week that they've had. We're not gonna take the bait.”
Jeffries’s comments are familiar. Democrats often argue that Trump is saying or doing bad things to distract from other bad things. For example, former transportation Pete Buttigieg argued during the 2024 campaign that Trump demonizes immigrants in order to distract from his own record of incompetence.
It’s easy to see why Buttigieg and Jeffries like the “distraction” framing. Trump spews outrageous statements with such volume it’s virtually impossible to respond to them all. Democrats have their own talking points and their own priorities and they don’t want to let Trump constantly set the agenda. By claiming he’s deliberately blowing smoke, they can pivot to whatever they’d prefer to talk about rather than just reacting to orange twaddle all day every day. In that sense, “distraction” is a useful, and maybe even indispensable, rhetorical device for opposition in the Trump era.
But while the use of “distraction” is understandable, it can also be misleading. For Trump, the most ridiculous things he talks about are often the ones closest to his heart, and the ones which most clearly reveal his outrageous and horrific agenda.
When Trump says he would like to run for a third term, it’s not just a distraction. It’s as close as he gets to telling the truth. He is an authoritarian who hates the Constitution and wants to be in power forever. That’s a message which we ignore at our peril.
“A lot of people want me to do it”
The 22nd Amendment to the Constitution was passed in 1947 after FDR had been elected to four terms in a row. It was intended to prevent that from happening again, and its language is very clear.
“No person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice,” it says.
That’s pretty definitive. There’s not a lot of wiggle room.
Nonetheless, Trump has mused about running for a third term in the past and did so again last Sunday during an interview with NBC. Asked about a possible third term, he claimed there were “methods” of getting around the 22nd Amendment, and insisted he was “not joking” about running again.
Trump suggested, for example, that JD Vance could run for president with Trump as vice president, then Vance could resign, leaving Trump in charge. (This would resemble the electoral chicanery Putin used to cement his dictatorship in Russia.) Thus, Trump would not be elected, but would get to be president anyway.
Trump also said there were other scenarios by which he could serve a third term that he would not discuss. Given what he’s willing to say in public, one shudders to think what options he might not want to talk about with the press. Martial law? An emergency suspension of the Constitution? Something worse?
In any case, Trump emphasized that “it’s very early in the administration” to talk about a third term. But of course, no other president would be talking about a third term at all, because it’s an obvious attack on the same Constitution that the president swears an oath to defend. That means you’re supposed to uphold it, not try to figure out sneaky ways to get around the clear intent of the text so that you can hold onto power forever and ever, hallelujah.
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But Trump has made it his business to attack the Constitution at every opportunity. He’s currently simply refusing to money Congress has appropriated and gutting agencies that Congress has mandated. He’s shredding the First Amendment by retaliating against law firms who take clients Trump doesn’t like, and by arresting people who have protested US support for Israel’s human rights abuses in Gaza. And of course in 2020 after he lost the election he organized and supported a violent coup attempt to retain power.
Trump is already an unconstitutional president
As it happens, the 14th Amendment to the Constitution bars insurrectionists from federal office. Again, the text is straightforward: officials who “engaged in insurrection or rebellion” are not allowed to hold positions of authority and trust in the government. Trump clearly engaged in an effort to overthrow the Constitution; that’s insurrection and rebellion. His run for president was unconstitutional.
That was the conclusion of the Colorado Supreme Court, which ruled in 2023 that Trump could not be on the state’s primary ballot. Maine was also ready to boot Trump from the election. But the Supreme Court overruled them in a unanimous decision.
The justices were concerned that state by state decisions on whether a candidate was an insurrectionist would be chaotic and divisive. That’s certainly true. But the alternative, to allow an insurrectionist to become president, was also chaotic and dangerous — as we are discovering.
Jeffries argues that Trump’s talk of a third term is a distraction because a third term would be unconstitutional and is therefore impossible. Jeffries is certainly correct that a third term is unconstitutional. But it does not follow that it is impossible.
Trump is an insurrectionist occupying the presidency. That’s unconstitutional, but there he is. No one was willing to stop him, because stopping him seemed inconvenient or, for Republicans, it would have interfered with their own pursuit of power.
This is Trump’s entire playbook, endlessly repeated. He spits on the Constitution, over and over, and dares someone to try to stop him. And again and again, people like Merrick Garland and Mitch McConnell and Chuck Schumer have decided that they don’t want to get saliva on themselves. They keep hoping against hope that Trump will stop spitting, or that someone else will stand between his mouth gunk and the sacred document.
But no one wants to get dirty. And so the Constitution, soaked in Trump’s spit, has become damper and damper, until it has all but disintegrated.
He’s not leaving willingly
Jeffries wants to talk about Trump’s current failures, and doesn’t want to focus on a third term. That’s reasonable enough. But it’s dangerous to assure people that Trump’s ambitions and threats are just a distraction. As Jim Clyburn said earlier this week in an interview, “This man does not plan to leave this White House … People better get serious about this.”
Trump lies a lot, but he is committed to destroying democracy, and he is committed to staying in power. That’s not a distraction — it’s a core truth about who he is. Trump is warning us that he wants to be President for Life. The Constitution won’t stop him. So we’d better.
That’s it for today
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Thanks for reading.
“When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time.”
-Maya Angelou
Relevant and to the point! Another brilliant piece from PN. Felon 47 must be take seriously when he talks about a third term. He is well supported by Steve Bannon as well. The naivety of Jeffries is just appalling, the distraction is just stupidity. Felon 47 means what he says. He wont leave the WH without a fight.