Steve Bannon, the “far-right political provocateur,” strategist, podcaster, and longtime Trump advisor, over the weekend suggested that the President-elect should pursue a third term—despite constitutional experts affirming that the U.S. Constitution explicitly prohibits anyone from being elected to more than two terms. Bannon is not alone. Others, including Trump himself, have floated the idea of a third term.
“Donald John Trump is going to raise his hand on a King James Bible and take the oath of office, his third victory, his third victory and his second term,” Bannon, who served four months in jail after a jury found him guilty of contempt of Congress, said at the New York Young Republicans’ gala on Sunday. “And, and the viceroy Mike Davis tells me, since it doesn’t actually say ‘consecutive,’ that I don’t know, maybe we do it again in ’28. Are you guys down for that? Trump ’28, come on, man!”
Davis has declared he will be “viceroy,” as Media Matters reported in March, saying: “I’m going to be Trump’s viceroy of D.C. because I don’t like democracy. I want more authoritory — authoritory powers.”
The 22nd Amendment to the U.S. Constitution is clear:
“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.”
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Bannon, who The Times has reported “aided in the effort to overturn the 2020 election,” is not alone in calling for Trump—who has yet to be sworn in to his second term—to run for a third.
Saying he “has occasionally sent mixed and cryptic messages,” The New York Times reported last month: “No, Trump Cannot Run for Re-election Again in 2028.”
And yet, The Times reported, Trump “has repeatedly floated the idea that he might like to stay in the White House beyond his next term.”
“I suspect I won’t be running again unless you say, ‘He’s so good we’ve got to figure something else out,’” the President-elect told House Republicans in a meeting last month,” as The Times noted.
“In July, at a gathering of religious conservatives, he told Christians that if they voted him into office in November, they would never need to vote again. ‘Christians, get out and vote. Just this time,’ he said. ‘You won’t have to do it anymore, you know what? Four more years, it’ll be fixed, it’ll be fine, you won’t have to vote anymore, my beautiful Christians.’”
At an NRA convention in May, Trump said, “I don’t know, are we going to be considered three-term or two-term? Are we three-term or two-term if we win?”
Even before he lost his first run for re-election, in September of 2020, Trump told supporters: “We’re going to win four more years in the White House.”
“And then after that, we’ll negotiate, right? Because we’re probably — based on the way we were treated — we are probably entitled to another four after that.”
Constitutional law experts agree: Trump cannot run for a third term.
“When asked if there were legal loopholes or other ways for a president to get around the 22nd Amendment, Stanford University law professor Michael McConnell, a specialist in constitutional law, had a definitive answer,” Vox reported in November.
“No. There are none. This will be his last run for president,” McConnell told Vox.
“I don’t think there’s any realistic possibility that the 22nd Amendment could be repealed,” Kermit Roosevelt, a constitutional law professor at the University of Pennsylvania told FactCheck.org, also in November. “That would take another amendment (like the 21st, repealing the 18th) and I don’t think it would get 2/3 of both houses of congress, much less 3/4 of the states.”
But there are questions surrounding the word “elected.”
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FactCheck.org points to the Presidential Succession Act and two legal scholars noted in a 2019 Congressional Research Service report that reads:
“By their reasoning, a former President serving as Speaker of the House, President pro tempore of the Senate, or as a Cabinet officer would also be able to assume the office of President or act as President under the ‘service vs. election’ interpretation of the Twenty-Second Amendment.”
Michael Sozan, a Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress, responding to video of Bannon’s remarks, warns, “As some of us have been saying, Trump will try to serve for a 3rd term — AND the far-right Supreme Court could reinterpret the 22nd Amendment to allow it. They already reinterpreted the Constitution to turn presidents into kings above the law, right?”
Watch the video below or at this link.