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House Speaker Mike Johnson, a constitutional law expert, cast doubt on Tuesday on the viability of Donald Trump’s stated interest in running for a constitutionally barred third term as president.
“There’s a constitutional path. You have to amend the constitution to do it,” Johnson told reporters at the Capitol. “That’s a high bar.”
“We take him at his word,” Johnson added. “I understand why some of the Americans do wish he would run for a third term, because he’s accomplished so much in his first 100 days that they wish it could go on for much longer. I think he recognizes the constitutional limitations and I’m not sure that there’s a move about to amend the Constitution.”
While some of Trump’s allies have insisted Trump is kidding when he talks about a third term, the president himself recently told NBC News he was “not joking.”
“A lot of people want me to do it,” the president said, referring to his allies. “But, I mean, I basically tell them we have a long way to go, you know, it’s very early in the administration.”
“I’m focused on the current,” Trump added.
Trump has also said he’d like to challenge fellow two-term president Barack Obama in a hypothetical match-up, despite such a contest being barred by the 22nd Amendment’s two-term limit.
“I’d love that,” Trump said this week in the White House. “Boy, I’d love that.”
Long-time Trump ally Steve Bannon has said MAGA operatives are strategizing how Trump could run again.
“I’m a firm believer that President Trump will run and win again in 2028,” Bannon said last week. “We’re working on it. … We’ll see what the definition of term limit is.”
Meanwhile, earlier this year, Republican Congressman Andy Ogles introduced a House resolution to amend the Constitution on Trump’s behalf.
“He has proven himself to be the only figure in modern history capable of reversing our nation’s decay and restoring America to greatness, and he must be given the time necessary to accomplish that goal,” Ogles said of the move.
Legal experts say Trump’s third-term plans are part of a larger pattern of flouting court orders and the Constitution, including the president’s attempts to end birthright citizenship by executive order, despite that right being enshrined in the 14th Amendment.
“He can’t do away with it with the stroke of his pen,” Georgetown law professor Michele Goodwin previously told The Independent. “It’s in the American Constitution.”
