The 22nd Amendment is clear: President Trump must give up his office after a second term. But his refusal to accept it underscores just how far he is willing to go to consolidate power.
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President Donald Trump speaks to the media outside the White House on Thursday.
After President Trump said last year that he wanted to be a dictator for a day, he insisted it was just a joke. Now he says he may try to hold on to power even after the Constitution tells him to give it up, and this time he insists it’s not a joke.
Maybe that’s true, maybe not. Mr. Trump likes to add fuel to the fire and irritate his critics. Talk of an unconstitutional third term distracts from other news and delays the day when he is seen as a lame duck. Of course, some in his own camp think it’s a joke, with Republican leaders laughing at it and White House aides mocking reporters who take it too seriously.
But the fact that Mr. Trump has inserted the idea into the national conversation illustrates the uncertainty about the future of America’s constitutional system, nearly 250 years after the country gained independence. More than at any time in recent generations, the president’s commitment to limited power and the rule of law is in question, and his critics fear that the country is heading down a dark path.
Mr. Trump, after all, has already tried to cling to power in defiance of the Constitution, when he tried to overturn the 2020 election despite losing. He later called for a “termination” of the Constitution to return to the White House without another election. And in the 11 weeks since taking office, he has pushed the limits of executive power more than any of his modern predecessors.
“I think this is the culmination of what he has already begun, which is a methodical effort to destabilize and undermine our democracy so that he can seize much more power,” Representative Daniel Goldman, a New York Democrat and the lead lawyer during Mr. Trump’s first impeachment, said in an interview.
“A lot of people aren’t talking about it because it’s not the most pressing issue of the day,” he said on Friday, as stock markets tumbled in response to Mr. Trump’s newly announced trade war. But the attack on democracy, he added, “is actually happening, and people need to recognize that it’s not hypothetical or speculative anymore.”
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