In a telephone interview last week with NBC’s Kristen Welker, Donald Trump refused to rule out running for a third term as president. Trump, who seems to think his approval ratings are higher than they actually are, told Welker that “a lot of people” wanted him to be president a third time. “We're very popular,” he told her. Trump claims his approval ratings are the highest of any president in this century, in the 70% percentile. That, of course, isn’t true.
In the most current Reuters/Ipsos poll, 45% of Americans approve of Trump's job performance. He comes in slightly higher, around 50%, when people are asked about immigration. George W. Bush had a 90% approval rating following Sept. 11, 2001. Still, the notion of Trump running for a third term in office continues to surface. At a House Republican retreat in January, Trump told the crowd, in that way he has of suggesting he is about to do something impermissible, “I think I’m not allowed to run again.” Turning to Speaker Mike Johnson he asked, “Am I allowed to run again, Mike?” The answer is resoundingly no. The 22nd Amendment to the Constitution, added in 1951 after President Franklin Roosevelt’s four terms in office, provides that “No person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice, and no person who has held the office of President, or acted as President, for more than two years of a term to which some other person was elected President shall be elected to the office of President more than once.” But that didn’t keep Steve Bannon from calling for Trump to run again, during a speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC). He told the crowd, "We want Trump in ‘28.” It’s not a joke, and we need to take it seriously. This is the same man who repeatedly refused to commit to accepting the results of an election if he lost. People were nonetheless shocked when he made good on that refusal in 2020. They should not have been, and we must not be now. It’s time to prepare, which means gearing up in both the courts of law, where this issue will surely go to the Supreme Court for a decision if Trump pursues it, and the court of public opinion, where even those who have supported Trump can be convinced it’s not a good idea to have anyone, let alone someone in their eighties, serve a third term, especially when the law doesn’t permit it. On Christmas Eve, and again in early January, I wrote about Trump’s fixation with Greenland, suggesting that it wasn’t just the next bright shiny thing many people seemed to think it was and we needed to take it seriously. “The concern isn’t that Trump will actually invade Greenland (at least not yet). It’s the damage he’s capable of doing to our relationships with key allies when he continues to talk smack like this. It’s lawlessness, it’s the talk of authoritarians, not American presidents, and that means we need to keep an eye on it.” This is more of the same. Trump always says the quiet part out loud. We need to listen. And when has “the law forbids it” ever meant anything to him? When Welker asked Trump if he had a plan for serving a third term, he confirmed that there were “plans,” suggesting that his Vice President, JD Vance, could win and then return power to him. Welker asked if there were other plans. Trump said there were but refused to offer specifics, cutting her off with a sharp, “No,” although he told her he wasn’t joking about the idea of a third term, saying, “No, no I'm not joking. I’m not joking.” How would Trump pursue this, given what appears to be the plain language in the 22nd Amendment? There is some decades-old legal scholarship suggesting that while a president may not be “elected” a third time, there are mechanisms that would permit him to “serve.” So, for instance, Trump’s comment suggests there is some thinking that he could be elected Vice President with JD Vance at the top of the ticket, and then Vance would magically step aside for him after winning. The legal rumblings are purely academic and have never been tested in court. The same is true for a strained interpretation of the 22nd Amendment that says a president cannot serve more than two consecutive terms and inserts language that isn’t in the Amendment itself into the mix. But, when has Trump ever gone with a legal theory virtually everyone thought was crazy—and then made it work out in his favor? And we know how well Trump plays the delay game in court. The time to get serious about knocking out the idea of a third term is now, before he can get it in circulation and give it currency. Two is more than enough. We’re in this together, Joyce
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Monday, March 31, 2025
Trump’s Third Term
The Creation Myth
These days, I'd never quote a Woody Allen joke from his standup days, but if I did, it would be this one: "My father worked for the same firm for twelve years. They fired him. They replaced him with a tiny gadget - this big - that does everything my father does, only it does it much better. The depressing thing is, my mother ran out and bought one." For Gen X, this joke hits hard. But it doesn't quite get how bad some folks in creative fields feel. It's not just that they've been fired and replaced by technology. They were the generation that created the technologies that threaten their obsolescence. Steven Kurtz in the NYT (Gift Article): "It’s the end of work as we knew it ... and I feel... powerless to fight the technology that we pioneered ... nostalgic for a world that moved on without us ... after decades of paying our dues ... for a payday that never came ... so yeah, not exactly fine." The Gen X Career Meltdown. "Every generation has its burdens. The particular plight of Gen X is to have grown up in one world only to hit middle age in a strange new land. It’s as if they were making candlesticks when electricity came in. The market value of their skills plummeted." (And, of course, the pace of plummeting has reached escape velocity with the rise of AI. This is part of the reason why the only assistant I use is Siri. That way I still feel superior to the technology.)
2Lunch BreakingIn an interview with NBC, Trump wouldn't rule out seeking a third term in the White House. Hmm, I wonder if he'd cheat in an election, demand state officials find him thousands of votes, lie constantly about winning, lead an armed insurrection to keep his opponent's victory from being certified, pardon those insurrectionists, and then staff his new administration exclusively with loyalists, all of whom have repeated the Big Lie? Of course he's planning to stay in the White House, and of course no one in his current administration will try to stop him. The big question is how other government and corporate institutions will respond to threats to our democracy. The answers to that question so far have been decidedly mixed (at best). Politico: The Great Grovel: How Trump forced elite institutions to bend to his will. (As this article details, the word "forced" is not quite accurate.) "The details are varied but two themes are consistent. The first is an effort — far more organized and disciplined than any precedent from Trump’s first term — to bring institutions who have earned the president’s ire to heel. The second theme is even more surprising: The swiftness with which supposedly powerful and supposedly independent institutions have responded — with something akin to the trembling acquiescence of a child surrendering his lunch money to a big kid on the morning walk to school." (To hammer home the analogy, Trump is literally cutting school lunch funding.) 3Before the Partnership Sailed"In the early days after Russia’s armies crossed into Ukraine, two Ukrainian generals journeyed from Kyiv under diplomatic cover on a secret mission. At the U.S. military garrison in Wiesbaden, Germany, they sealed a partnership that would bring America into the war far more intimately than previously known." Adam Entous in the NYT (Gift Article): The Partnership: The Secret History of the War in Ukraine. "This is the untold story of America’s hidden role in Ukrainian military operations against Russia’s invading armies." (And a bygone era when American leaders blamed Russia and Putin for the war they started.) 4It's All About the Girth"Early in the 2023 season, Aaron Leanhardt started asking New York Yankees hitters what they needed to perform better ... An MIT-educated physics professor at the University of Michigan for seven years, Leanhardt left academia for athletics specifically to solve these sorts of problems. And as he spoke with more players, the framework of a solution began to reveal itself. With strikeouts at an all-time high, hitters wanted to counter that by making more contact. And the easiest way to do so, Leanhardt surmised, was to increase the size of the barrel on their bat ... The bat had its big debut over the weekend, as the Yankees tied a major league record with 15 home runs over their first three games." ESPN: What is a torpedo bat? Inside MLB's next big thing. (Finally, an edge for the Yankees...) 5Extra, ExtraJet Lag: "The F-35, a fifth-generation fighter, was developed in partnership with eight countries, making it a model of international cooperation. When President Trump introduced its successor, the F-47, he praised its strengths — and said the version sold to allies would be deliberately downgraded. That made sense, Mr. Trump said last week, 'because someday, maybe they’re not our allies.'" (Nothing can make that happen quicker than relentless talk like that.) NYT (Gift Article): How Trump Supercharged Distrust, Driving U.S. Allies Away. No ally has been more offended than our closest one. WSJ (Gift Article): No More Mr. Nice Guy. In Fighting Trump, Canada Presents Mr. Elbows. "Nation draws inspiration from hockey legend Gordie Howe’s rough style of play; Gretzky to the penalty box." 6Bottom of the News"The ferry ride from Helsinki’s city center to the island of Pihlajasaari takes only 10 minutes and deposits visitors at a playground of beaches, trails and rocky shoals excellent for sunbathing. But I had a different mission: to speak to a tree." Finland Says It Can Teach Tourists to Be Happy. Challenge Accepted.
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