Over the weekend, Donald Trump made clear that he is, in fact, “not joking” when it comes to the possibility of running for a third term.
Given that, I wanted to dig into what the Constitution — specifically the 22nd and 12th Amendments — have to say about whether any of this is even possible.
So I went to the smartest Constitutional expert I know: Steve Vladeck who, in addition to writing the amazing One First Substack, is also a professor at Georgetown Law School. (Hoya Saxa!)
“The best reading of the Constitution is that this is nuts,” Vladeck told me during a Substack Live conversation on Tuesday afternoon.
But, Steve also noted that there is a potential literalist reading of the 22nd Amendment (and the 12th!) that would allow Trump to be elected as vice president in 2028 and then, if the president resigned, to ascend to the presidency — for at least two years. He described this as “what a Twitter lawyer could do if they read the text [of the 22nd Amendment] totally in a vacuum.”
We talked about a WHOLE lot of other stuff including:
Ulysses Grant and the possibility of a 3rd term in 1880
Why the next 3 weeks is critical in determining how much the Supreme Court will limit Trump’s executive power grab
What the Supreme Court’s two decisions so far this year tell us about its stance vis a vis Trump
A deep dive into the psyche of Chief Justice John Roberts
The entire conversation is FREE. But in order to be able to keep making this sort of content — calling balls and strikes no matter what uniform the batter is wearing — I need your support! It’s $6 a month or $60 a year to become a paid subscriber. What are you investing in? An independent news creator who is transparent, authentic and not beholden to any billionaire or corporate board.
Thanks to Gabe Fleisher, Baker’s Heartbeat, Gerald Levin, Barry Medlin, Cari Fosnight, and many others for tuning in. I am doing another Substack Live with Rahm Emanuel today at 4:30 pm eastern time. Get the app to watch it live!
