Things That Shouldn’t be Hard to Say
Twenty-Second Amendment edition.
If your spouse asked you point-blank if you were planning a sexy weekend with a co-worker and you gave that exhaling smile of an answer that Thune gave to a direct question about Trump 2028, odds are good divorce lawyers might be called.
The “Lindsey was joking” dodge wouldn’t cut it.
If I am betting, I am still betting against a 2028 run. But I have tripped over into the space that says such an attempt might be undertaken. Worse, I am at a point where I am not certain SCOTUS would stop it.
Don’t get me wrong, the text is quite clear,
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.
Still, it is a testament to our political moment that my mind turns to things like the Colombian Supreme Court ruling that a process to call a constitutional convention was constitutional because of an expression of popular will on the subject, which superseded the written document.* There, of course, are a variety of examples in authoritarian regimes wherein parchment barriers have simply been placed in a drawer for future use with little legal pretext at all.
The thing that this video clip tells me, however, isn’t that there will be such a breach of the Constitution. Rather, it just shows how much Thune fears Trump and is performing for him. He wants to avoid the possible wrath of Dear Leader.
This is not a healthy state for our democracy, and it is an ongoing illustration of how leaders in the Republican Party are so concerned about their own hold on power that they are willing to publicly humiliate themselves to pass loyalty tests with Trump. I am sure Thune tells himself it is the price he must pay to be in a position to do “good” or somesuch. But all I can say is these folks need to go read The Lord of the Rings and ruminate on why people like Gandalf and Galadriel wanted nothing to do with the One Ring, and how lusting for it (to do good!) drove Boromir mad.**
Side note: Bash and Thune sounds like a basic cable buddy cop show from the early 2000s.
*I paraphrase a process that took place in 1990 and led to the election of a constituent assembly, which rewrote the Colombian constitution in 1991.
**Apologies for crossing the streams of my polisci brain and my geek brain.
I think some of the brighter MAGAs may be worrying about the distant (but maybe not forever distant) prospect of Nuremberg trials. The Republicans are violating laws left and right, and Trump is failing. They need Trump to stay in power to avoid risking lifetimes of criminal and civil procedures.
Ain’t that the sad truth.
@Michael Reynolds: Given the USA’s terrible record on accountability (the Civil War, Nixon, J6, all of Trump’s crimes), I wouldn’t count on it.
The nervous laughter and the puny nod of his head speaks louder than any words he could say.
I think this is mostly a way for people to suck up to Trump. He gets the message that his followers think he is so wonderful they want him to rule forever. I would expect this to ramp up near the end of his term and there will be a push to have one of the family nominated to run. I would expect it to get kind of nasty as people try to Out-Trump Trump to gain the nomination as we find out if the cult will transfer its allegiance to the family. Going to be a lot of irritated GOP governors, senators and celebrity would be POTUS candidates.
Steve
I wouldn’t bet against you, because it’s a bet I don’t want to win. Still, unless he’s dead, incapacitated, or so clearly demented even his base turns against him, El Taco will at least try to run for a third term.
This would include suspending elections on some phony pretext, some kind of war or phony war, or just because he wants to. I’m sure he’s insanely jealous that Ukraine did not hold elections, and Zelensky is still president.
Ukraine’s constitution or laws, not sure which, allows for this. The US does not. Just the same, I can see the fixer court deciding “that which isn’t forbidden is allowed,” and that there’s no constitutional provision that says El taco cannot suspend some or all elections.
@Steven L. Taylor:
Neither would I, but from personal experience I can tell you that the consciousness of guilt and the awareness that the sword of Damocles is hanging over your head, whatever the odds, is not an easy way to live. If MAGA crashes out and the Dems come back in there is danger, Will Robinson.
See: Nazis learning to tango in Argentina. See also: Raskolnikov.
OK, I’ll be a contrarian. I don’t think Trump will run for a third term.
If he’s not blatantly gah-gah, I think he’ll declare some emergency forces him to extend his current term. It would be consistent for Roberts and his accomplices to issue a temporary ruling that they’ll get around to it next term (hoping Trump will die in the meantime and save them from the awkward situation of having to uphold black letter law) and in the meantime, what with the emergency and all, irreparable harm would be done by vacating the presidency without a clear successor.
I see a lot of stuff about renaming the “shadow docket”. “Shadow” seems entirely appropriate to me.
@Michael Reynolds: As an aside, I lived in Argentina in 1964-66 as a 10-12 year old. Our family doctor was German. I’ve always wondered…
The Biden portrait joke, I guess, shows that Trump does not have the emotional maturity to lead a great country for another minute, much less a third term. https://www.usatoday.com/videos/news/politics/2025/09/25/trump-mocks-biden-with-autopen-portrait/86342159007/
Soon, he will cover the outside of the White House in gold leaf.
@Scott:
I had an Argentinian college classmate with a German surname. She wandered into my room one night with a box of curlers and asked me to show her how to set her hair, since back at home her maid always did that.
@Michael Reynolds:
The GOP needs Trump to stay in power, but I don’t think fear of future accountability is the driver.
The Republican agenda is broadly unpopular – even where they are generally favored, they lose people with how they go about it [see Immigration and ICE]. GOP voters have been conditioned to believe that ANY compromise or moderation is essentially capitulating to the evil blood drinkers of the left. Democracy doesn’t work for the Republican Party anymore and it won’t until such time the party decides to abandon their intransigent far right fringe in order to moderate toward the center right where they were before Gingrich or thereabouts. Of course, that would mean years in the desert before there was meaningful redirection. Spoiler alert: they ain’t going to do that.
They need Trump to stay in power because he is sui generis in his capacity to unabashedly promise people unicorns and then shamelessly claim the sh!tshow we are witnessing is a unicorn parade, essential traits for an authoritarian leader. It’s authoritarianism or a long period of irrelevance, therefore it’s Trump 3.0.
Reminder, Steven L. Taylor has actually experienced:
– A conspiracy involving U.S. law enforcement and the U.S. intelligence community to undermine and destroy an elected U.S. President.
– A conspiracy involving virtually the entire Democratic Party and almost all the mainstream and liberal media to hide Joe Biden’s alarming mental decline from the public.
– The most egregious era of censorship since the McCarthy era.
– Two assassination attempts on a Republican Presidential candidate, the public murder of a conservative activist, and an outburst of one side in American politics celebrating political killing.
And what concerns him is Trump trolling people about getting a third term.
That quota must be pretty steep.
@PepperPrepper: For what it’s worth, I now recognize that you aren’t Drew, et al.
But, you are almost certainly another multi-banned user, so, adios once more.
You are not offering anything of purpose and do not know how to do anything other than engage in pointless whataboutism.
Whether the constitution means what it obviously means is one of the great questions of our political era, and there are arguments on both sides of this issue.
Who has standing to file a suit against Donald Trump running for a third term?
Has Congress passed enabling legislation?
And the Constitution doesn’t prevent someone from running for a third term, merely from being elected. There would certainly be no reason for the Supreme Court to even take up the case until at least January 6th, 2029.
And does the explicit prohibition on being elected to a third term mean that he can have a third term some other way? Does this imply that a two-term president can legally institute a coup?
And finally, what if Congress simply redefines what a year is? I recall the House declaring that the rest of the legislative session would be a single “day” this spring. Blocking the ability to force a vote on tariffs or something.
I expect Trump to be dead by then and the whole question to be moot. The man is super old, and his face droops on one side, and his ankles each have their own zip code.
He’s also likely to be completely senile if he does survive that long. Maybe they will shuffle him off to Mara Lago, build a fake Oval Office, and tell him that he won by a landslide. Maybe build a replica White House.
oh, cool! If you’re logged in, and you type your email wrong, it posts anyway, with the right avatar. Or it just looked misspelled and I am dim.
Ok, trying completely wrong name and email because I cannot leave things like this alone.
ETA: Ha! This had the name “Earwax Incorporated” and an email of po******@******um.net
I do not know why this pleases me.
@gVOR10: I expect the Supreme Court would rule it’s up to the electoral college to declare who won the election, and Congress has the authority to over-rule its decision. So really, humble justices shouldn’t insert themselves into the political process.
But like others, I believe Trump may well not make it to the end of this term, so the question may be moot.
@Steven L. Taylor: Thank you! We were feeding this particular troll waaaay too much.
Back on topic; in general, it seems that Trump has successfully, and will continue to successfully use any premise for an emergency to do whatever he wants. I think the SCOTUS majority will rubber stamp anything he does. So the question becomes what We The People are able to do through direct action and electoral influence to ensure he is stopped. I know the former only pisses him off, but it might nudge borderline congresscritters in the right direction. The latter only works if people show up.
@Michael Reynolds: I was calling for a Truth and Reconciliation Committee back in 2021 when Biden took office. I felt like we had gone too far over the line to come back to normal times.
Unfortunately, the Democrats were too interested in getting back to normalcy. They overestimated the strength of our institutions and underestimated the need to take drastic action.