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Notes -
A moderately interesting interview with Eric Trump just dropped in the FT. (Limited-use gift link - the article is paywalled but may also be accessible on a 5/month basis with free registration)
The headline is "Eric Trump opens door to political dynasty." It isn't explicit, but applying bounded distrust it looks like the FT reporter raised the issue and Eric responded mildly positively. It is consistent with the Trump family's general approach of keeping the idea of an illegal 3rd term and/or a dynastic successor in the public eye while maintaining plausible deniability about actually doing it.
I don't find Eric's denials that the family is making money off the Presidency interesting - the Mandy Rice-Davies principle applies. Eric is lying here and the FT makes this clear to a reader who is paying attention while avoiding words like "lie" and "falsely". It is an interesting example of a political reporter trying to write about a lying politician without engaging in either hostile editorialising or "opinions about shape of earth differ" non-journalism.
If I had to guess, Eric is positioning himself, personally for a future move into politics. Over the last few years Eric has been running the Trump Organisation while Don Jr and Barron support their father's political operation. With Barron taller and more talented, but still a long way off 35, Don Jr is the obvious dynastic successor at the moment. But the bit of the interview about a Trump dynasty is explicitly about the idea of Eric and not Don Jr being the politician.
Wow, child of political officeholder is open to idea of someday running for office themselves. This has never ever happened in the history of the world before. Nope, no dynasties of Dalys, Bushes, Kennedys, Gandhis, every local politician round my way... this is why there isn't a whole Wikipedia article about US political families besides one about the practice in general. Yes, this is all about "an illegal 3rd term" for Trump.
The “third term” thing has always been crazy to me. The guy is 78 now, if he wins a third term, he’ll be 82 at the start and 86 at the end. I don’t think anyone could do the job at that advanced age. I’m not sure about Eric Trump in any case, but he’s much more logical than Trump term 3.
It's crazy on multiple levels. His age, like you said, but also that it's blatantly illegal. I guess in theory the constitution could be amended, but does anyone seriously think that's likely? I certainly don't, at least. And without an amendment, a lot of Trump's supporters are going to refuse to support him any more (because they don't like flouting the law), at which point he can't win an election anyways.
To me, the whole idea of a third Trump term is just another in the long line of people freaking out about how he's the worst thing to ever happen to America. As the saying goes, the demand for authoritarianism from Trump outstrips supply.
This isn't crazy once you accept a not insignificant number of people -- an amount I perceive to be growing, not shrinking, with time -- believe the laws are already being routinely broken, including constitutional rights, with no penalty.
Sure, a third term's unconstitutional. So is the constant deprivation of my gun rights in blue states. I'm not convinced the third term rule is more important than the gun rule.
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Trump's appeal to his base is in large part being the legitimate ruler who performs the proper rites of rulership with the right pomp and doesn't do anything worse with their tax money than steal it. They didn't abandon him after J6(I did; Trump proved himself weak by not doubling down). 'Legality' has nothing to do with it. It's about 'better coverage than 5g'.
But he wouldn't be the legitimate ruler in this case, because he can't be. I don't deny that there's a group of people who are so fanatical about Trump that they will follow him no matter what he does. But it's not enough to get him re-elected.
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