'Liberal nightmares and MAGA dreams': Why Americans shouldn’t dismiss idea of third Trump term

02 February

Less than one week after Donald Trump became the 47th president of the United States, Rep. Andy Ogles (R-TN) proposed a resolution that would allow the MAGA leader to stay in power for a third term.

In an article for Politico Magazine, Politico's senior legal editor James Romoser explains why — despite the fact that a third term for a US president is unconstitutional — it's not impossible.

"The Constitution imposes an explicit two-term limit on the presidency — even if those two terms, like Trump’s, are non-consecutive," Romoser writes. "'No person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice,' the 22nd Amendment mandates."

However, "Around the globe, when rulers consolidate power through a cult of personality, they do not tend to surrender it willingly, even in the face of constitutional limits," the legal expert submits.

Romoser writes:

'Presidents tend to like their jobs, and there have been many attempts for them to overstay,' says Mila Versteeg, a law professor at the University of Virginia.

Versteeg co-authored a 2020 study that examined 234 heads of state in 106 countries in the 21st century. She found that one-third of them sought to circumvent legally imposed term limits. Many of them succeeded — typically not by directly disobeying the law, but rather by exploiting gaps and weaknesses in their constitutional systems or by convincing meek courts to bless their consolidation of power.

Recep Tayyip Erdogan did it in Turkey. Daniel Ortega did it in Nicaragua. Vladimir Putin did it in Russia. The list goes on and on, including leaders whom Trump admires.

'In the countries where this has happened, the rule of law is much weaker than in the United States,' Versteeg says. 'But we shouldn’t dismiss it as impossible or unimaginable. It has happened around the world.'

"It’s the stuff of liberal nightmares and MAGA dreams," Romoser writes, and it's possible, he emphasizes.

“Anyone who says that obviously the 22nd Amendment will deter Trump from trying for a third term has been living on a different planet than the one I’ve been living on," former President Barack Obama associate White House counsel and current Protect Democracy Executive Director Ian Bassin told Politico.

Romoser's full report is available at this link.

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