The issue of Trump’s third term will be resolved long before 2028.
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Nobody who has been paying any attention whatsoever should be surprised by Donald Trump saying that he is “not joking” about possibly seeking a third term.
Certainly not the pearl-clutchers in the mainstream media, who (unhelpfully) pointed out that this would violate the 22nd Amendment.
No kidding.
While Trump suggested that there are “methods” that would allow him to run again, even low-information voters (at least those who completed middle school) know that this isn’t true.
Then again, it may not matter.
Trump is in the process of shredding the Constitution and putting the country on a fast track to authoritarianism, so of course he is not going to want to leave office and of course he doesn’t care about some amendment that was ratified when he was a toddler.
That being said, we believe that the question of whether Trump will run again is going to be moot one way or another because his political fate past this term is very likely not going to be decided at the ballot box.
Setting aside the possibility of another felony conviction for some blatant crime he commits in the next couple of years or a complete Bidenesque deterioration, there are two plausible ways this will ultimately play out… and neither of them is fun to think about.
The first is that there will be no 2028 election.
That’s pretty straightforward.
This scenario used to be inconceivable, and anybody who suggested that this is where we were headed was dismissed as a doomsayer. Well, now it seems a lot more likely than Trump finding some kind of loophole to run for a third term and the Supreme Court signing off on it.
It’s easy to imagine how it will shake out: After four years of eroding voting rights laws, a process that began this week, some obscure panel of experts consisting of the likes of Steve Bannon, Hans von Spakovsky, and Kris Kobach (look them up) will come up with an excuse for why a “free and fair election” will not be able to be held.
If we had to venture a guess, “communists” in blue states, George Soros, and “illegals” voting would play a role in this justification.
Again, all of this used to sound far-fetched, but it seems possible now.
The second scenario isn’t much more appealing: After Trump thoroughly destroys the US economy, alienates all American allies (at least the democracies), and even the last moderate Republican voter figures out that he is insane, the GOP finally dumps him.
Hey, it could happen… although the fact that this seems less plausible than a suspended election shows how far in Trump’s clutches Republicans now are.
Still, if the party is getting shellacked in the midterms, and we believe that to be more likely than any other outcome (if there are midterms), then all bets are off.
Even though we are not even three months into this presidency, we will know a lot more by the end of the week.
First of all, the results of a handful of elections this week will be very telling, especially the race for a Supreme Court seat in Wisconsin and a couple of congressional seats in Florida.
If Democrats win the former decisively and make the latter competitive, then Republicans will start feeling jittery.
While Trump (hilariously) claimed in the same NBC interview that his approval rating is in the high 70s in “the real polls,” he is doing poorly in the real real polls.
That is the main reason why the president asked Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY) to stay in Congress instead of risking a special election in her solidly red district.
Realistically, and based on early turnout, Democrats should have no shot at winning the Florida races.
Trump won the First Congressional District (Matt Gaetz’s old seat) by 37 points and the Sixth, which was previously held by National Security Advisor and chat group administrator Mike Waltz, by 30 points.
However, the special elections will very likely be a lot closer than that, especially in the Sixth District. If either of them is decided by single-digits, some national Republicans are going to start getting really nervous.
In addition, this week will also bring “Liberation Day,” i.e., the day on which Trump announces how high the tariffs will be that he wants to place on the goods from various of the US’s main trading partners.
Chances are that Wall Street is not going to like that, and more red numbers will highlight how calamitous Trump’s economic policy is.
One last event to keep an eye on will be the national protests scheduled for April 5. Let’s see what kind of numbers the resistance can muster. If turnout is overwhelming, it will give Republicans something else to think about.
In conclusion, we wish we could tell our readers not to fret because Trump is not going to be running for a third term. Sadly, the alternatives are just not any more pleasant to think about.
In his Navigating the Insanity columns, Klaus Marre provides the kind of hard-hitting, thought-provoking, and often humorous analysis you won’t find anywhere else.
