What to know about the possibility of Trump serving a third term

Murmurs from President Trump and his allies have stirred up questions of the incumbent possibly seeking a third term in office, even as he’s currently constitutionally barred from doing so.

Trump has remarked on a few occasions since being sworn in for a second term that he wouldn’t be running again unless people insist and decide to “figure it out.” And Rep. Andy Ogles (R-Tenn.) has even introduced a constitutional amendment that would specifically allow Trump to run for another term but not any of his two-term predecessors.

These efforts, which aren't entirely unheard of in recent history, would require a number of steps that make a third Trump term a considerable long shot.

Here’s what you need to know:

Not completely without precedent

Most presidents followed George Washington’s tradition of not running for more than two terms. A few attempted a third term, but none were successful until former President Franklin Roosevelt won four terms amid the crises of the Great Depression and World War II.

After Republicans won control of Congress in 1946, they almost immediately introduced a resolution to limit the president’s time in office. Brian Kalt, a law professor at Michigan State University who has studied the 22nd Amendment, said Democrats at the time weren’t “crazy about it,” but they didn’t stop it and many supported it.

Once ratified, the amendment declared, “No person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice.” Presidents could also serve up to two years of a term that someone else was elected to and be elected to two additional terms, for a total of up to 10 years in office.

But the amendment has received some criticism since its ratification in 1951, and a few have called for repealing it.

Kalt said former President Eisenhower was so popular that some called for him to be able to serve a third term, but Eisenhower wasn’t interested. In 1986, then-Rep. Guy Vander Jagt (R-Mich.) called for amending the Constitution to allow then-President Reagan to serve a third term.

“Ronald Reagan is one of the greatest American Presidents of all time, and I want to keep him on the job,” he wrote at the time.

Both Reagan and former President Clinton raised the idea of changing the amendment, with Clinton saying the limit should maybe be two consecutive terms, but both were speaking generally for the future and not referring to themselves.

Trump takes it to a new level

Even though the proposals aren’t entirely new, Trump has taken them to a new level in reference to his political future and isn’t letting them go.

“The thing that’s different about Trump is that in the past, the president would always be very demure about it,” Kalt said. “They sort of take the approach of letting other people say that and keeping their hands up. That's not Trump's style. So obviously that's not the tone that he took in his recent remarks.”

Trump has discussed the possibility of a third term multiple times before and after being sworn in last month. In November, he said in comments to House Republicans: “I suspect I won’t be running again, unless you do something. Unless you say, ‘He’s so good, we have to just figure it out.’”

Multiple Republicans said Trump was joking.

Trump said it again a week into office at the House GOP’s annual policy retreat, saying he wasn’t sure if he was allowed to run again and asking Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) if he could. Some again said he was joking, but Ogles introduced a resolution to amend the Constitution days earlier.

The amendment would allow Trump to run again because he was elected to nonconsecutive terms but prevent anyone from being elected to more than three terms overall or two consecutive terms.

“He has proven himself to be the only figure in modern history capable of reversing our nation’s decay and restoring America to greatness, and he must be given the time necessary to accomplish that goal,” Ogles said.

Convoluted process under current laws

While the 22nd Amendment precludes running for a third term, some arguable if unlikely loopholes exist, Kalt said.

The amendment clearly prevents being elected a third time, it doesn’t state that someone can’t be president a third time, though that doesn’t mean it’s allowed.

“This really gets to the heart of people's different views of how to interpret the Constitution because the loophole only emerges if you're really strictly limiting yourself to the text,” Kalt said. “If you're saying, well, what's the point of the 22nd Amendment? What is it trying to accomplish? What it's trying to accomplish is, if you have two terms, then you leave and that's it.”

What’s unsettled is if someone who has served two terms can be elected vice president, or a position lower down in the presidential line of succession and ascend to the presidency. The 12th Amendment states that no one ineligible to be president can serve as vice president, but it’s arguable whether that applies to term limits, which were enacted later, or only the other constitutional qualifications like age.

“One thing is that no one has ever tried this... because it was part of our constitutional norms,” said Victoria Nourse, a law professor at Georgetown University who worked at the White House and Justice Department, about seeking a third term despite the 22nd.

“They’re calling into question all sorts of things that no one has paid attention to for a very long time.”

Bar for passing constitutional amendment is high

If Ogles is serious and his resolution gains some momentum, the chances of this likely highly controversial amendment, or even less controversial ones, passing seem slim to none.

The Constitution places a high bar for passing an amendment, and it seems even more difficult in these highly polarized times. A resolution first must pass with two-thirds support in both houses of Congress, and then three-quarters of all state legislatures, equal to 38 states, must ratify it.

A post from the Constitution Center from last month noted just how difficult and rare passing an amendment is, intentionally so. Since the 27th Amendment was ratified in 1992, more than 1,400 have been proposed in Congress, but none has received the two-thirds vote to go to the states, the post said.

But Nourse argued that Trump’s words should still be taken seriously regardless of the low chances of this coming to fruition.

“What happens is it takes it from the crazy off the wall to on the wall,” she said.