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.”
NOTUS was unable to reach the Third Term Project for comment. But on its website, the group suggests the possibility of the president’s oldest son, Donald Trump Jr., filling in as the presidential candidate on the ticket.
In addition to this legal theory, one lawmaker in Congress has introduced a resolution to amend the Constitution so Trump could run for a third term. It has no co-sponsors, but Trump has repeatedly made comments that suggest he doesn’t think two terms should be an absolute limit.
The White House did not respond to a request for comment.
The possibility of Trump trying to serve a third term is a threat that some Democrats are starting to take seriously. One Democratic congressman, Rep. Dan Goldman, has introduced legislation to reaffirm the 22nd Amendment.
Meanwhile, Republican lawmakers in Congress were taken aback by questions about this proposal.
“Don’t do silly stuff,” Sen. Bernie Moreno told NOTUS. “President Trump is going to go down as the greatest president of American history when he’s done with this term.”
(“You should start the rumor that I’m running for VP,” Moreno later said to NOTUS, laughing.)
Lawmakers that NOTUS spoke with said they hadn’t heard of the idea, and they aren’t giving it any attention.
“I don’t think there’s any world in which that happens,” Sen. Ted Cruz, a lawyer who has argued cases in front of the Supreme Court, told NOTUS.
Sen. Rand Paul told NOTUS that he doesn’t put “any stock into that” plan. Sen. Cynthia Lummis called the idea “ludicrous speculation.”
And Sen. Josh Hawley told NOTUS that he believes the 22nd Amendment would bar Trump from serving as president again, “no matter” how he “may come into the role.”
Still, some legal scholars believed there might be some gray areas — and some level of precedent.
Jonathan L. Entin, a law professor at Case Western Reserve University, told NOTUS that based on the plain language in the 22nd Amendment, it is theoretically “possible” to circumvent it. He used past Alabama Gov. George Wallace as an example of a similar situation.
In 1966, the state constitution said Wallace couldn’t serve a consecutive term. So Lurleen Burns Wallace, his wife, ran for the position with the understanding that she would carry out her husband’s administrative agenda. She passed away during her term.
Entin still said that Trump doing something similar would be unlikely to work.
“You couldn’t make this argument with a straight face,” Entin said. “I can’t believe that even if they tried this stunt that it would work.”
One lawyer quoted on the Third Term Project’s website as saying it could “theoretically happen” told NOTUS that he has never spoken with the Third Term Project and he didn’t think it was an effective argument because of another constitutional amendment.
“The last sentence of the 12th Amendment says, ‘No person constitutionally ineligible to the office of president shall be eligible to that of vice president,’” Stanford Law School professor Michael McConnell said. “So I don’t see how that works.”
—
Torrence Banks is a NOTUS reporter and an Allbritton Journalism Institute fellow.