President Trump ‘not joking’ about a third term, says there are ways around constitutional limits

President Trump is flirting with running for a third term — no joke.

The move would put him on a collision course with the 22nd Amendment to the Constitution, which limits a person from being elected president more than twice.

“There are methods which you could do it, as you know,” Mr. Trump said in an interview with NBC News.

Pressed on whether he was joking, Mr. Trump said, “No, no, I’m not joking.”

Mr. Trump started mulling the idea shortly after his inauguration during a House Republican retreat in Florida, where he asked GOP lawmakers, “Am I allowed to run again?”

The answer is no — unless he can muscle through a chance to the 22nd Amendment that says, “No person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice.”

That is a gargantuan task.

A two-thirds vote of each chamber of Congress and ratification by three-fourths of the states, meaning 38 currently, are required to amend the Constitution. The most recent successful proposed amendment was submitted from Congress to the states in 1971.

Still, Mr. Trump’s critics say the president has a history of trampling over political norms and has shown he is willing to challenge outcomes after refusing to accept the results of the 2020 election.

Meanwhile, MAGA loyalists are fanning the flames, suggesting Mr. Trump — who will be 82 years old when the 2028 election rolls around — has a viable path to a third term.

Rep. Andy Ogles, Tennessee Republican, introduced a resolution days after Mr. Trump took the oath of office a second time that seeks to amend the Constitution to allow a president to be elected for up to but no more than three terms.

It is artfully worded to apply only to Mr. Trump and not to former Presidents Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama — it specifies that the first two terms couldn’t have been consecutive.

But with Democrats holding far more than one-third the seats in both chambers of Congress and controlling both houses of the legislature in 19 states, the chance of the amendment clearing even one of the three hurdles in the next three years is effectively zero.

Nevertheless, Steve Bannon, who served as chief strategist in the first Trump administration, has said he is a “firm believer President Trump will run and win again in 2028.”

“A man like this comes along once every century if we are lucky,” Mr. Bannon recently said on NewsNation.

The idea has spurred some creative thinking, including that Mr. Trump could run on the Republican ticket as vice president and then slide back into the job after the top of the ticket resigns.

In his interview with NBC News, Mr. Trump said, “that’s one” of the avenues he is exploring. “But there are others too,” he said without elaborating.

However, that specific sequence is constitutionally impossible, though neither Mr. Trump nor Kristen Welker of NBC News, who put that scenario to him, pointed that out.

The 12th Amendment states that “no person constitutionally ineligible to the office of President shall be eligible to that of Vice-President of the United States.”

Asked whether he was ready to bear the responsibility of being president for a further four years on top of the three and more than a half remaining in this term, Mr. Trump said, “well, I like working.”