The twenty second Modification to the U.S. Structure says, “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.”
Appears fairly clear-cut, proper?
However learn rigorously—”no individual shall be elected” to the workplace. And therein lies the keys to Donald Trump’s fantasies of a 3rd time period, saying to NBC’s Kristen Welker on Sunday, “There are methods which you could do it.”
So how precisely would Trump turn into president with out being elected president?
Is Vance loyal sufficient to surrender his hard-earned energy had been he to win the presidency?
A technique, Trump mentioned, could be to swap tickets with Vice President JD Vance. He would run on a ticket with Vance and get elected vice chairman. Then, Vance would surrender the workplace out of the goodness of his coronary heart and resign, or possibly Trump would simply shiv him, who is aware of. Trump wouldn’t care both method. Regardless, he would then turn into president.
Besides that gained’t work.
The twelfth Modification says, “no person constitutionally ineligible to the office of President shall be eligible to that of Vice-President of the United States.”
Nicely, that appears fairly clear-cut, doesn’t it? Sadly, that’s not the one avenue for Trump to try to sneak in.
The present order of presidential succession is:
Vice President
Speaker of the Home
President Professional Tempore of the Senate
Secretary of State
We’ve already famous that the primary is clearly off the desk. Nevertheless, the remaining aren’t.
The Structure doesn’t really set necessities for speaker of the Home, saying solely, “The House of Representatives shall chuse their Speaker and other Officers; and shall have the sole Power of Impeachment.”
Whereas each speaker has been a member of the Home, it’s clear that there’s nothing requiring that to be the case. Therefore, a Republican Home may merely elect Trump as speaker, after which elevate him after each the president and the vice chairman resigned to pave his return to energy.
A plain textual content studying of the Structure makes this positively doable, although the courts must wrestle with the intent of each the twelfth and the twenty second Amendments—which collectively clarify that basically, two presidential phrases is sufficient. However on this case, Trump wouldn’t be elected to the presidency, he could be elevated to the job.
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The extra sensible obstacle to this state of affairs is that two individuals would now have to give up their probabilities to be president of the US so fucking Trump may proceed trashing the nation and the world. Individuals don’t need that, not even Republicans, and that’s earlier than Trump’s insurance policies actually do a quantity on our economic system.
To not point out, these two individuals will each have gone by a grueling nationwide marketing campaign, gained the votes of tens of thousands and thousands, and for what? To give up and provides all of it up proper after taking the oath to workplace?
Transferring down the record, president professional tempore of the Senate is meant to preside over the Senate within the absence of the vice chairman (therefore the Latin “for the time being”), which the Structure pretends is the president of the Senate (and in follow, simply means a tie-breaking vote if needed).
Just like the Home speaker, the Structure doesn’t present any {qualifications} for the function, so by custom, the bulk occasion picks its oldest member for the largely ceremonial place. It’s at the moment Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley.
Presumably a Republican Senate may choose Trump as president professional tempore. However that may require the Home to be in Republican palms as effectively, in any other case a Democratic speaker would ascend to the highest. At that time, assuming the entire Republican Get together is singing from the identical choir e-book, it might simply be simpler for the Home to make him speaker.
And at last, there’s that secretary of state job. Think about Trump as secretary of state? Expensive god. In any case, it might be a short-term charade. However now you’re speaking about 4 individuals giving up their probability to be president—the elected president, the elected vice chairman, the speaker of the Home, and the president professional tempore of the Senate. Trump could also be deluded sufficient to suppose that many individuals would clear the trail for him, however that may fly within the face of human nature. A not-president Trump would have zero leverage over an precise president.
And naturally, that’s nonetheless assuming that the trouble would survive authorized challenges primarily based on the twenty second Modification. In spite of everything, it’s clear what the framers of that modification meant—to forestall one other Franklin D. Roosevelt from taking place. That’s, to forestall one other president from entrenching themselves within the Oval Workplace.
But it surely does say rather a lot about Trump that quite than deal with the job at hand, he’s obsessing over a 3rd time period. He desires energy for the sake of energy itself, jealous of despots like Russia’s Vladimir Putin and North Korea’s Kim Jong Un. In fact, he’s going to bask in these kinds of fantasies.
Trump calls himself a king. However we all know we aren’t a nation of kings—and we by no means will probably be. Get your Every day Kos T-shirt or hat to unfold the message and put on it with pleasure: No Kings.
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