Trump said he would run for a third presidential term: can he do it

US President Donald Trump said that he has the right to run not only for a second, but also for a third presidential term. Washington is sure that the head of the White House is really ready to violate the constitution in order to stay in power. Writes about it with the BBC.

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Trump once again stated that he “deserves” to be re-elected not only for a second, but also for a third presidential term, while speaking at a rally of his supporters in Nevada.

“In just 52 days, we will win another four years in the White House,” the US President said. - And after that we will begin negotiations, right? Considering how we were treated, we probably deserved an extra four years after that.”

For the first time, Trump mentioned that he did not intend to limit his stay in the White House to only two terms during the 2016 election campaign and then, after the election, he constantly returned to this topic. In the last month alone, for example, he announced three times that in 2024 he was going to run for the next, third presidential term.

Washington believes that the head of state speaks of these plans quite seriously.

“Trump has publicly explained on more than one occasion that he was just making jokes to, as he puts it, ‘piss off liberals,’” explained Marvin Kalb, a senior expert at the Brookings Institution in Washington. “But it very much seems that the president is testing the possible reaction of his supporters and is seriously preparing them for just such a scenario.”

Presidential "compensation"

Since the end of the impeachment proceedings initiated by Democrats in the US Congress, Trump has constantly argued that due to the almost two-year investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election, he “lost” at least half of his first presidential term and can now count on compensation.

According to him, legal procedures and hearings in the House of Representatives took too much of his time, making it difficult to fully focus on public affairs.

“Despite the incredible success I have had as President, they have stolen two years of the Presidency that we will never be able to get back,” he tweeted in early May 2019.

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A few days earlier, speaking to his supporters in Wisconsin, Trump clarified that he intends to seek an increase in his first term in office from four to six years.

“I promise that at the end of these six years I will be very happy,” he said to thunderous applause from the crowd.

Several months later, answering questions from reporters at the White House, Trump made it clear that he did not intend to limit himself to the requirement to add two years to his first presidential term, and was ready to stay in the presidential chair much longer.

“I won’t be here in six years, or maybe in ten or fourteen,” he said in response to a question from a New York Times reporter.

In September 2019, at a joint press conference with FIFA head Gianni Infantino at the White House, Trump announced that he plans to remain in power for a third term in order to personally host the participants in the FIFA World Cup, which will be held in the United States in 2026.

“We will have to extend my second term until 2026,” he said then. “I will have to extend it for a couple of years.”

“I think that none of you will have problems with this,” the US President said, addressing the journalists gathered in the hall.

The next day, the head of the White House posted an image of his 2024 campaign poster on his Twitter.

Prior to that, Trump's messages often featured a video claiming that his reign would last until the end of the XNUMXst century.

All these messages were perceived as a whim of the president famous for his eccentricity. But in December 2019, former Arkansas governor and ex-Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee tweeted that Trump has the legal right to be re-elected for a third term, and Huckabee himself has already received an offer to head his campaign headquarters.

“I am deeply honored to have been asked to lead Donald Trump's campaign for re-election in 2024. This gives me enough time to plan everything,” he wrote.

However, Hakkabi did not provide any evidence of the existence of such a headquarters.

Three times president

When asked whether Trump can claim a third presidential term, lawyers in the United States usually answer very briefly.

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“No,” said Columbia Law School professor Richard Frolik. “According to the constitution, his first term ends at noon on January 20, 2021, and his second, if re-elected, at noon on January 20, 2024. There can be no other terms.”

According to the tradition introduced by the first President of the United States, George Washington, one and the same person could not hold the presidency for more than two terms. This rule, however, was not legislatively formalized for a long time, which allowed several heads of state, including Ulysses Grant and Theodore Roosevelt, to try to run for a third term.

The only president in the history of the United States to be re-elected for a third, and in 1944 for the fourth time, was Franklin Roosevelt.

It wasn't until 1947 that the US Congress passed the 22nd Amendment to the Constitution, officially limiting presidential rule to only two terms, whether consecutive or recessed. The amendment was ratified four years later, having received the approval of the required number of states, entering into legal force.

To repeal it, the Constitution requires the approval of two-thirds of legislators in each chamber of Congress. Until now in the history of the United States, this has happened only once, when in 1933 the 21st Amendment was adopted, repealing the 18th Amendment, which introduced the famous “Prohibition” law into the country.

Last year, however, President Trump made it pretty clear that he could stay in power not as a result of a constitutional change, but only because his supporters demand it.

“You don’t think people will ask me to stay after my second term?” he wrote on Twitter in June 2019.

Speaking at a congressional hearing in February 2019, Trump's former personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, who was subsequently sentenced to prison on financial fraud charges, said his ex-boss would never voluntarily leave the presidency.

“I am afraid that if he loses the 2020 elections, there will be no peaceful transfer of power,” the lawyer said.

In the foreword to his book, written in prison, Cohen tried to explain why Trump, in his opinion, uses every opportunity to stay in power.

“I am confident that Trump knows that prison awaits him if he leaves the White House,” wrote Cohen, accusing the head of state of a whole bunch of crimes and offenses, from financial fraud to participation in orgies with minors.

Judicial Wars

It seems that the opinion that Trump will refuse to voluntarily surrender if he loses is shared by both supporters and opponents of the US president.

Trump himself refused to answer questions about whether he would be ready to admit defeat if US voters vote for former Vice President Joe Biden in November 2020. “I won’t say “yes” or “no” now,” he said. - We will see".

The president's closest advisers, meanwhile, are already recommending that Trump declare a state of emergency in the country if he loses the election. A longtime friend and adviser to the head of the White House, political strategist Roger Stone, in an interview with the infamous Infowars portal, urged the president to use the law passed in 1807 allowing the use of troops in the United States.

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“By Election Day, he should have an operation in place, using the FBI, the U.S. Marshals Service, and Republican Party officials across the country, to be prepared to formally challenge the election results in court, and, if necessary, use physical force against criminal elements,” Stone advised. .

Trump himself and representatives of his campaign headquarters have repeatedly stated in recent months that if Biden wins, the so-called antifa units and activists of the ongoing protests in the country against police violence could open real hostilities in the prosperous suburbs, populated mainly by white voters.

In an interview with Fox News in early September, Trump did not substantiate this theory, but said that he personally would be “happy to deal” with left-leaning demonstrators. “We will calm them down very quickly if they go for it,” the US President said, mentioning the inevitable mass unrest if Biden wins.

Democrats, in turn, are preparing for protracted legal battles.

According to the New York Times, the former vice president's campaign has already assembled a "special team" of several hundred lawyers, including former US Attorney General Eric Holder, key legal advisers in the Barack Obama administration and former senior Justice Department officials.

“Trump and his allies are pushing for a catastrophic election scenario,” former Obama legal adviser Bob Bauer told the publication. “Our job is to prevent them from intimidating voters.”

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