Could Trump Serve a Third Term by Running as a Vice President? [View all]

[Celerity]

https://www.notus.org/donald-trump/trump-third-term-vice-president



There’s a new long-shot proposal that is getting floated as a possibility for how President Donald Trump could serve a third term. The idea is that Trump would run on the Republican ticket as vice president in 2028, and if it won, the elected president would immediately resign so Trump could carry on into a third term. It’s a plan that has gotten more attention after a group called the Third Term Project, whose goal is to get Trump elected to a third term, popped up at the Conservative Political Action Conference last week.

Republicans and legal experts are largely scoffing at the idea and saying it’s blatantly unconstitutional because of the 22nd Amendment, which says that a president cannot be elected to office more than twice. But some of them said they can imagine a scenario in which Trump’s most ardent supporters try to make the case anyway because technically, he wouldn’t be “elected” as president.

“If Donald Trump is wildly popular in 2028 because he’s had an extraordinarily successful presidency,” former Alabama Rep. Mo Brooks told NOTUS, “yeah, then I think more people are going to look seriously at using the subterfuge to try to circumvent the 22nd Amendment to the United States Constitution.” “But right now, no,” Brooks said.

Barbara McQuade, a University of Michigan law professor and former U.S. attorney, told NOTUS that while a “fair reading” of the 22nd Amendment would show that its intent was to prevent a president from serving for as long as Franklin D. Roosevelt, the fact that it doesn’t state that directly creates uncertainty. “I worry that textualists will say he is eligible to serve as president,” McQuade said. “He just can’t be elected president. So to me, it is not clear, and I think that that is a potential risk. I think we won’t know until the question is ripe and goes before the Supreme Court, when I imagine someone would try to block that ticket on the ballot.”

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