Trolling, Trolling, Trolling….

Steve Bannon says they're working on abolishing term limits so Donald Trump can run again in 2028.

It's like we said they were going to try to do this. pic.twitter.com/m3CyRP00b3

— Art Candee 🍿🥤 (@ArtCandee) March 19, 2025

The 22nd Amendment:

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 the President more than once. But this Article shall not apply to any person holding the office of President when this Article was proposed by the Congress, and shall not prevent any person who may be holding the office of President, or acting as President, during the term within which this Article becomes operative from holding the office of President or acting as President during the remainder of such term.

Now, there are (per Politico, anyway), four arguments for how Trump could circumvent the 22nd.

First is, he repeals the 22nd, as the 21st repealed the 18th. Fat chance:

A formal repeal, though, would require a landslide of popular support that is far-fetched in today’s polarized nation. Two-thirds of both chambers of Congress would have to propose a new amendment, or two-thirds of the states would have to call for a constitutional convention to propose one. Then three-fourths of the states would have to ratify the proposed amendment. Even if Trump remains popular among Republicans, it’s hard to imagine him garnering the supermajorities needed.

Trump is historically more popular out of office than in it. There’s not going to be any groundswell to repeal the 22nd in the next 45 months. Trump’s not pushing it, and clock is already ticking. The Politico article was published 1/31/25, and includes this tidbit:

Trump himself has not explicitly endorsed an amendment push. But on Monday, he shared a social media post from Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick lauding Trump’s first week in office. “People are already talking about changing the 22nd Amendment so he can serve a third term,” Patrick wrote. “If this pace and success keeps up for 4 years, and there is no reason it won’t, most Americans really won’t want him to leave.”

What a difference six weeks has made. Even some Trump voters want him gone now.

Okay, so what if Vance runs and puts Trump on the ticket as VP, with the plan that Vance resigns and Trump takes over.  Clever, huh?

Well, maybe to a MAGAt. First problem: Vance is probably the only person in the Administration less popular than Elmo. Second problem: Trump is only popular when he’s been gone for four years. He’s already reminding people how badly he handled Covid, and it hasn’t been 100 days. The recession he’s setting up for hasn’t happened yet. Joe Biden led one of the most successful recoveries in my lifetime, but mild inflation (a decade of double digit inflation only defeated by wringing the activity out of the economy with double digit interest rates is what REAL economic problems look like, punks!) and a rise in egg prices due to bird flu, sank Biden (well, and the fact America was NOT going to elect a black woman). But Trump is going to shine through the chaos and catastrophe he’s busy creating?

Pull the other one, it’s got bells on it.

Besides, what if Vance decides he likes sitting behind the Resolute Desk and telling Trump to fetch him a Diet Coke? How does Trump force Vance to resign? (And if the deal is part of the campaign “promise”? Politico thinks that would put pressure on Vance (or whoever) to yield. But shit, anyone who runs and wins a Presidential election won’t be a shrinking violet. And it’s an even less likely scenario if that’s the ticket’s offer to the electorate. Trump would be a drag on the 2028 ticket, not a plus.)

Option 2 is a non-starter. Besides:

Here in the U.S., a different part of the Constitution arguably complicates the loophole. The 12th Amendment, ratified in 1804, says that no one “constitutionally ineligible to the office of President shall be eligible to that of Vice President.” So if Trump were disqualified from serving a third presidential term under the 22nd Amendment, then he also wouldn’t seem to be eligible to become vice president under the 12th — and in that case, the loophole wouldn’t work.

Pretty sure the drafters of the 22nd were well aware of the 12th. IOW, this is only a loophole if you ignore the rest of the Constitution. Politico goes on to justify its long analysis of this issue before mentioning the 12th amendment by quoting somebody who says it’s still arguable the “loophole” is present. But that’s like arguing section 1 of the 14th doesn’t apply to undocumented immigrants. Not an argument the courts have found terribly persuasive so far. So I still say: not really a “loophole.”

Option Three: Trump runs anyway. Bannon is associated with the argument (and I presume he’s still making it): that the 22nd only applies to consecutive terms, and not to non-consecutive ones. Legally, that’s also a non-starter. But if Trump wins the GOP nomination in 2028, and stands on the 22nd, what would the Supremes do? Show actual courage? Or say the Constitution doesn’t say what it actually says? Some questions pretty much answer themselves, right? The Court would most likely say it was a political question, and they don’t answer those. And that could be, surprisingly, the right answer.

The solution would probably be political anyway, if the Court refuses to decide. The electorate would reject Trump the same way they’re rejecting Elon (who really is only Trump’s heat shield. We’re ten weeks in, he can’t last in that position for four years.). Turns out people who aren’t internet trolls or MAGAt cranks, pretty much like their government the way it is. Which means they like the way the Constitution functions, Presidential term limits and all. The outrage at the GOP and Trump might well end the party as a political force. “A republic, if you can keep it,” Franklin reportedly said. Well, this would be one time when we the people would need to step up and keep it, rather than rely on institutions to do it for us.

I’d almost welcome that try.

So what if Trump just says “Fuck it! I ain’t leavin’!”

The last time Trump tried to cling to the presidency, he used lies about election fraud to undermine the 2020 results and then encouraged his supporters to go “wild” in Washington the day his defeat was certified. Four years from now, could he pursue a power grab even more brazen and lawless? It’s an extraordinary thing to contemplate. And scholars of authoritarianism point out that, when norms like term limits die, the culprit is usually not a single and obvious coup. Rather, the erosion happens slowly, often with the acquiescence of people and institutions within the constitutional system.

Yeah, and that didn’t make him more popular at the time, and even his most fervent supporters in Congress tried to follow the rules to foil Biden’s victory. What they didn’t do was support anarchy; and for a brief moment after the terror and chaos, Senators and representatives spoke as if they had spines.

They certainly didn’t see to it that Trump was re-elected regardless. And that’s the problem with this doomsday scenario. Who enforces it? The White House Marines? The Secret Service? The U.S. Marshals? The Capitol police ? The FBI? Seriously: how many people in how many of those agencies would have to conspire to overthrow the Constitution in order for Trump to just stay in power? How many government employees would have to acquiesce to his clearly illegal orders?

His supporters went “wild” in 2021, for a very short time. And then the government arrested, prosecuted, tried, and imprisoned almost all of them. Trump pardoned them 4 years later, which didn’t exactly make him more popular.  Would that same government decide Trump could stay in power indefinitely? Because it sure didn’t support him four years ago.

This scenario wouldn’t even pass muster as the plot of a bad political thriller.