Speaker Johnson casts doubt on Trump’s plan for 3rd term

• House Republican leadership, including Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., is casting doubt on President Trump’s stated ambition to pursue a third presidential term. The president said his team is actively looking for a way around the Constitution’s two-term limit. 
• The 22nd Amendment states no person shall be elected president more than twice. It can only be changed with a two-thirds vote in both houses of Congress and ratification by three-fourths of the states. 
• Rep. Dan Goldman, D-N.Y., said Trump should be taken at his word and that Trump is trying to normalize the idea within the Republican Party.

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House Republican leadership, including Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., is casting doubt on President Donald Trump’s stated ambition to pursue a third presidential term. The president said his team is actively looking for a way around the Constitution’s two-term limit. 

“I think he recognizes the constitutional limitations, and I’m not sure that there’s a move about to amend the Constitution,” Speaker Johnson told reporters Tuesday, April 1. 

“I don’t know what he was referring to, I never saw it,” House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, R-La., told Melanie Zanona. “But you see it like with Greenland, like with Panama Canal, there’s a lot of things the president talks about. Ultimately, it gets people talking and addresses some other issues, too.” 

“There’s no proposal to change the constitution right now,” Scalise added. 

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What prevents Trump from seeking a third term?

The 22nd Amendment states no person shall be elected president more than twice. Despite that, President Trump said his team is exploring options, including having him run as vice president to someone who would cede power if elected. 

“I’m sure there’s a way to do it. We’re lawmakers. We can do anything. This country has made laws and changed laws, and anything can be done,” Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., told SAN. “If the people want it, we’ll see what happens.”

There’s only one way to change the Constitution—a two-thirds vote in both houses of Congress and ratification by three-fourths of the states, or 38. 

‘Taking Trump at his word’

Johnson said he’s taking Trump at his word when he says he wants to stay in the White House. 

“There’s the constitutional path. You have to amend the Constitution to do it, and that’s a high bar,” Johnson said. “You know, the president and I have talked about this, joked about it. He’s joked about it with me on stage before. You know, we take him at his word.” 

That’s exactly what Democrats are concerned about—that Trump is serious and may make an effort to stay in power. 

“What we have learned about Donald Trump is that he doesn’t joke, and he will push the envelope as far as he possibly can,” Rep. Daniel Goldman, D-N.Y., told SAN. “In reality, he’s planting a seed.”

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Goldman continued, “He plants a seed with something absurd. He did it with self-pardons. Then he claims he’s backing away, he’s not really serious, he doesn’t know. Republicans then start to support it. Then, he socializes it and normalizes it. And ultimately, it becomes Republican orthodoxy. And this one is especially dangerous because it would only happen four years from now.”

Goldman said there’s no legal or functional way for Trump to win a third term without changing the Constitution.