If Trump Wins, He’ll Run for a Third Term. And the Republican Party and the Supreme Court Will Let Him.
How the Constitution becomes a dead letter.
I NEED A FAVOR!
Remember Will Saletan’s amazing project about Lindsey Graham? Well, it’s been nominated for a Webby Award and I very much want Will to win.
So I need you to vote for him.
Here’s what you do: Click here. You can vote for Will. Then it will ask you to create a Webby account and then you’ll have to verify the account by clicking on a link in an email they send you.
I know it’s a pain and a big ask. But Will deserves this.
So please, go vote for Will right now. I’ll owe you one. Thanks, fam.
1. Feeling 22
A year ago I wrote that once Donald Trump was officially his party’s nominee, a movement would arise to suggest that, actually, if he wins in 2024 he could run for re-election in 2028 because something-something the Twenty-second Amendment doesn’t apply in his case.
We know that Trump will take this position eventually because he took it in 2020 when he said—on multiple occasions—that after he won his first re-election he should be allowed a third term because of how unfairly he was treated. Here is what Trump said in September 2020 at a rally in Nevada:
And 52 days from now we’re going to win Nevada, and 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’re probably entitled to another four after that.
Now the American Conservative has published a piece arguing that ackshually the Constitution totally permits a third Trump term of office. We’ll talk about that piece in a moment, but this isn’t really about what one magazine thinks. It’s about how nullifying the Twenty-second Amendment would fit the pattern of accommodation that America’s political and legal institutions have followed in their attempts to deal with Trump over the last five years.