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While on his journey to Asia last week, President Trump made headlines by expressing a desire to pursue a third term. “Would I love to run again? Absolutely,” he remarked, hinting at the possibility without explicitly confirming his intent. “The Democrats don’t have the great team of people that we do,” he further commented.
That followed a comment made a week earlier by Trump ally Steve Bannon, that there “is a plan” to keep Trump in the Oval Office beyond 2028.
Some may dismiss these remarks as mere rhetoric aimed at energizing his MAGA supporters or provoking his political opponents. However, overlooking this statement could be a significant misjudgment.
By broaching this topic, Trump and his supporters seem to be preparing the public to accept the notion of a third term, making it less of a shock if it were to be pursued. Moreover, this discussion subtly warns the Supreme Court of a potential case that might challenge the interpretation of the 22nd Amendment, which limits presidents to two terms.
The current Supreme Court has demonstrated a willingness to reinterpret constitutional provisions in ways that favor Trump. A notable instance was their decision in 2024 that allowed Trump to remain on the ballot, despite the 14th Amendment’s prohibition against insurrectionists holding presidential office.
Adding to their controversial decisions, the Court ruled five months later that neither a sitting nor a former president could face criminal charges for actions taken while in office. Justice Sonia Sotomayor criticized this ruling, stating it undermines the fundamental constitutional principle that no individual is above the law.
For a court willing to make such rulings, shutting down most of Trump’s legal troubles, it will not be much of a stretch to twist the 22nd Amendment to help him remain as president even longer.
Even some of Trump’s most fervent allies don’t want us to see talk about a third term. They insist that it could not happen without a constitutional amendment. Take Speaker Mike Johnson; on Oct. 28, when reporters asked him about what the president said, the Speaker wrote it off entirely, calling the idea another demonstration of the president’s trolling of Democrats and the liberal media.
Johnson added that he doesn’t “see a way to amend the Constitution because it takes about 10 years to do that … to allow all the states to ratify what two-thirds of the House and three-fourths of the states would approve. So, I don’t, I don’t see the path for that.”
One day after the Speaker of the House made his comments, the president offered a bit of classic Trumpian double speak when he said, “You know, based on what I read, I guess I’m not allowed to run.” Then, opening the door that he just seemed to close, Trump added, “So we’ll see what happens.”
“We’ll see what happens.” This, as CNN explains, has long been the president’s “go-to phrase … for saying absolutely nothing while simultaneously ruling absolutely nothing out.”
If we have learned anything in the last decade, it should be that the president doesn’t let the words of the Constitution stand in his way. Moreover, they also don’t seem to trouble the conservative majority on the Supreme Court.
Since the end of his first term, the court seems to have turned decidedly MAGA. As law professor Michael Dorf puts it, “The Court’s conservatives appear not to recognize the profound threat that the second Trump administration poses to constitutional democracy. “
That is, I fear, too generous an explanation for the court’s series of constitution-distorting rulings.
The president and many of his followers think of him as a political messiah. They take seriously the view that the United States is a nation in decline, precipitated by the destructive policies and woke ideologies of the so-called “radical left.” They take seriously the president’s claim that “I alone can fix it.” And so, I suspect, so do the president’s allies on the Supreme Court. They have shown that they won’t let the Constitution stand in the way when the fate of the nation is at stake.
Don’t be fooled, despite what Mike Johnson and the president are saying now: the 22nd Amendment will not stand in the way of a third Trump term. If necessary, the Supreme Court will see to that.
Austin Sarat is the William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Jurisprudence and Political Science at Amherst College.