Monday, February 03, 2025

Four More Years Plus



“I’ve raised a lot of money for the next race that I assume I can’t use for myself, but I’m not 100% sure,” Trump told House Republicans at a gathering here, one week after he was sworn into office for a second term. “I think I’m not allowed to run again.”

Trump continued to entertain the prospect of yet another presidential run, prodding Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., who moments earlier had introduced him onstage, to promise a “new renaissance.”

“Am I allowed to run again?” Trump asked. “Mike, I better not get you involved in that.”

A former constitutional lawyer, Johnson, standing on stage with Trump, chuckled at Trump's comments. Other GOP lawmakers present also laughed.

Lefty "Ring of Fire" podcaster Farron Cousins argues

There is a threat in that statement but it's not the threat of him running for a third term. And the threat was very subtle and it didn't come across as a threat. But I' gonna tell you what it was. Donald Trump is speaking to a group of Republicans that he needs to keep in line. He knows that the House of Represpresentatives has a razor-thin majority that he can't afford to lose more than two Republicans. the threat is, I've raised a ot of money for the next race.And the subtlw underlying threat of that is (that) if you don't go with me 100% of the time, I will fund a primary challenger to you. 

That is what the media missed in reporting on this story. They're too hypwer-focused on, oh my God, he's threateing to run for a third term. No, he is theatening, but he is threatening the Republicans in the House that I won't give you any of the money I've raised if you don't go along with me. Because he's admitting- he's like, I can't use it on myself, so who am I gonna spend it on?

Cousins correctly identifies Trump's primary (pun intended) objective in making this remark. The President wants to make sure that every Republican support him unconditionally and each understands that if he or she wavers, President Trump will finance a primary opponent.

Nonetheless, there is another threat there, one which Cousins explicitly rejects.  He sttates that the President wants people to believe that he's "gonna do a third term" but

It cannot happen. It will not happen. I am not certain about many things with the Trump Administration but this one I am certain of so don't waste your time freaking out about it. There's plenty of other crap to freak out about, trust me. But this ain't it.



The President does want to persuade Senators that he is not necessarily a lame-duck President while the conventional wisdom is that he is, unable constitutionally to serve another term. However, the Twenty-Second Amendment of the U.S. Constitution is silent on the issue of the number of terms a President might serve. In total, Section 1 reads (with the relevant portion in italics and in bold)

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 preventt 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.

The Constitution thus prohibits an individual from being elected to the office of the President more than twice. It does not prevent him (or her) from serving more than two terms, or ten years.

Throughout American history, it seemed preposterous that a President would attempt to serve more than two terms. It also would have seemed preposterous that any President would: break the law by "freezing trillions of dollars in federal spending and dismissing members of the national Labor Relations Board (NLRB) and Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC); that his Administration would order the removal of all prosecutors involved in investigating an attempted coup against the US government and a list of all FBI agents who worked on it with the aim of dismissing many from employment; that he would defy the plain language of statue that he notify Congress beforehand with "a substantive rationale" before firing Inspectors General; or disregard the Constitution's plain language that anyone born in the USA is an American citizen.

These are only the most publicized, clearly illegal and/or unconstitutional acts taken in the first two weeks of the new Administration. Removing civil service protections from federal employees so they can be fired at will and replaced by toadies, withdrawing from the World Health Organization, imposing steep tariffs on allies, attempting to intimidate them and others, and the list goes on. 

Representative Andy Ogles of Georgia has introduced a resolution to amend the US Constitution to remove the prohibition on a President being elected to a third term. That is unlikely to prevail and with dozens of moves, ranging from the reckless to worse, made by the White House, there is- as Cousins maintians- no reason to "freak out" about the third term thing. Yet.

There are other ways to remain in power which, especially with the the Supreme Court's ruling last July in Trump v. United States, which eliminated virtually any check on criminal conduct by a President.  Donald Trump is a very elderly man and if physical appearance is any indication (often not), he may not make it tanother four years. 

Yet if he remains on two feet, he's not going anywhere. That's his goal and if the courts, law enforcement, and other institutions do not stand up to the despot, by that time all resistance may be futile.


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