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Steve Bannon is back in another interview asserting that Trump will get a 3rd term. Like previous times where he's said this, he doesn't really go into too much detail, besides saying they have a plan and they're working on it. I get this is Bannon's schtick lately and he's a political operative and so maybe this is just something he bangs on to rile up the base, but for fun, I want to consider here what the actual plan could be.
Bannon does give away more here than I've seen in other interviews where this has been brought up. I'm going to focus on 2 statements that I think start to give the plan away. When the interviewer says the 22nd Amendment makes it clear that Trump cannot have another term because he's on his 2nd term already:
To me, this is a point in favor of the theory that's been floated around already that their plan relies on some very literal reading of the 22nd Amendment.
Key word: elected. Fairly straightforward, and again, not anything that hasn't been brought up before. Trump runs as some other GOP candidate's VP, they win, and that candidate immediately steps down, making Trump president despite not having been "elected to the office of the President". He's been elected twice, but the 22nd says nothing of being President more than twice. The usual objection to this is that the 12th Amendment prevents this by barring someone who is ineligible for the presidency to be VP, but you can also play word games with this. If you interpret the 12th Amendment's "constitutionally ineligible to the office of President" to just mean "doesn't meet the requirements laid out by Article II", then Trump is still eligible to be President. He's just ineligible to be elected.
But isn't this against the spirit of the 22nd Amendment? Bannon:
It's one thing for Trump to lose the election and then try to still hang on for a 3rd term. But it's another if--given he's able to get on the ballot as VP for 2028, which I think he probably could in enough states--he and his Presidential candidate do actually win. Then the messaging becomes much easier. But how can Bannon be sure enough that the American people will elect Trump in this manner? Simply rig the election. Many say this is too difficult because you'd have to rig so many individual elections, and the states control elections, and if it's easy then why don't we see evidence of it being done in the past, etc. I'll admit this is probably the weakest part of the plan. But if you step back and say, "What steps would be required for this to be doable, and are they doing them?" then there are definitely signs. Dominion was recently bought by a Republican operative, and Trump's people are already signaling they want to mandate election rules for states in time for the midterms in 2026. A Trump DHS appointee who will be in charge of election infrastructure told all 50 states at a recent meeting that they
Even if they can't pull off mandating election rules at the federal level, Trump may have enough state legislatures in the bag that they might just take enabling actions "independently" of any top-down federal enforcement.
Also, you know, he could just actually win legitimately, that's completely possible with the state the Democrats are in right now.
So yeah, this isn't really anything genius. Win the election or rig it so that you do + creatively interpret the 22nd and 12th Amendments. Some quick responses to possible objections:
Lower courts yes, SCOTUS I'm 50/50 on. There are smart people who know the legal world far better than I do who are certain that even the current SCOTUS would rule 9-0 against Trump on this, so maybe. But smart people have been wrong about many matters involving Trump, and SCOTUS has disappointed me before. I don't care that "such-and-such legal scholars have written X about the interpretation of the 22nd/12th Amendment" because at the end of the day it's just SCOTUS that matters. I've seen a theory that SCOTUS has been forgiving to Trump in recent rulings because they know this day is coming, so they want to build up credibility with him for when they inevitably have to rule against him on this. That just seems far too giga-brained for me.
I never really bought the claims that "2020 was the most secure election in history" even though I don't think it was rigged. I just think if someone really tried, they could. Voting machines are repeatedly shown to have security flaws, and I don't think that all the swing counties that matter will use paper ballots and do risk-limiting audits to verify the results.
Maybe, although by 2028 Hegseth may be able to fire enough people and appoint loyalists in their place to make this a non-issue. Someone with deeper knowledge of the US military can comment here. I don't take the "swearing an oath to the Constitution, not the President" thing too seriously, because while I think it may hold at the top, I don't think it holds all the way down the chain of command, and that's what matters if it comes to having to forcibly remove Trump from the Oval Office. However the Courts rule also plays into this, if it can be framed that this whole thing actually isn't violating the Constitution.
Congress continues to abdicate its powers in favor of letting the executive do whatever they want (both parties) and I don't see this changing anytime soon. The only defectors from the GOP we see right now are MTG and Rand Paul. Trump is still going strong despite his age, and I think the people in the MAGA-sphere surrounding him have sunk too much into it to do anything other than milk it until he dies in office. I've completely given up hope that anybody in the White House or Congress will take a principled stance on this. Democrats will continue to be very concerned and maybe organize a No Kings march to no effect.
Making any sort of play for a Trump 3rd team would open the door for Obama to throw his hat as well, and nostalgia+vibes would almost certainly grant him a victory, so this would not be on the interest of the right (especially as Obama is still young for a politician, only being 67 years old at 2028)
I notice that Obama has been more visible lately, and him and Trump are sniping at each other more than usual. I think it’s being considered as a back up plan in case this actually happens.
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Trump, partly driven by the jokes Obama made at his expense during the 2011 White House Correspondents' Dinner, ends up becoming president. Obama, spurred by efforts to enable Trump to serve a third term, returns to office himself. It's like poetry, sort of. They rhyme.
One of my favorite things about Trump is his ongoing refusal to go to the dinner. It's delightfully petty, but I also think it's good policy, that being so buddy-buddy with the press (like Obama was) actually is a bad thing for the office.
Not to mention good for the press.
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If the Trump camp telegraph this way ahead of time, maybe. The Democratic Party machinery would have to spin up a whole campaign around Obama, assuming he even wants to do it, and assuming the Democrats actually want to play into further cementing that precedent. I see a scenario where Trump somehow gets a favorable ruling in 2027 and Democrats hold off on running a 3rd term candidate so that in the event they do win, they can work to cement the law to really make the spirit of the 22nd Amendment an unambiguous thing without looking like they're pulling up the ladder behind them.
Another possibility is the Democrats don't see this coming, Trump brute forces it with some help from favorable state legislatures to get on the ballot, wins, and then the SCOTUS ruling in his favor comes through post-2028 when he's already secured the presidency. Then the Democrats have the option to run Obama for 2032, but that's too far out to really reason about. Who knows what happens if we get to that point.
Hillary III (or IV, depending if we count the 2012 second term of Obama as being what stymied her trying again then) - this time for sure! đŸ¤£ In 2028 she would be a sprightly eighty years old, mature enough for the job!
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Remember a person named Kamala Harris? They'd do the same thing. They'd just declare it's the current thing now, and significant percentage of their base is trained to embrace the current thing immediately on declaration. Except that Obama is much more visible and prominent figure that can stand on his own and hold the audience (at least if the teleprompter is not malfunctioning) and has people who are genuinely like him, not because the Party told them so. So it'd be very easy to do this if they'd need to. Of all the obstacles, this is the least one, they've done it before.
Unlike Republicans of course, who have never once changed their opinion on supporting Ukraine, or the efficacy of the free market, or the efficacy of free trade, or how small government should be, or if state owned enterprises are good, or anything else in the last ~9 months.
There's still discussion among the Republicans on Ukraine. Some think we should do more, some think we should do less. It had been like that before the election, it had been after the election, it is now, it will be in the future. It's not like today all Republicans put up Ukrainian flags on Twitter, and tomorrow every single one forgets about it and puts up Hamas flags or whatever instead. There's also disagreement between libertarian wing - which supports free trade - and populist wing - which is more skeptical about it. I don't think there's a lot of disagreement about cutting the government, though again populist wing wants much more government intervention than the libertarian wing. So yes, there are different wings among the Republicans, and I am sure some Republicans may, on occasion, change their minds and move from one wing to a different one. That's normal too. What's appears to me less normal is when almost the whole party starts in unison (sometimes literally using the same words, there were many examples) discussing the same topic in the same way, only to drop it and switch to another one immediately. Nobody cared for any renovations in the White House ever, and suddenly starting a couple of days ago it's a sacred symbol of the nation where one can't move a nail without being literally Hitler. And in a month nobody would remember it, moving on to the next current thing. It works like that.
You could literally just take your comment, replace "Republican" with "Democrat", and it would be true
You say the Republicans don't literally all move as one, sure. Neither do the Democrats. You'll always find exceptions, congratulations. You can find them for Dems too.
https://globalaffairs.org/research/public-opinion-survey/dramatic-rise-republican-support-ukraine
This article shows 20%+ swings in opinion in a very small timeframe, which satisfies the "significant percentage of their base is trained to embrace the current thing immediately on declaration" that I quoted.
I don't even disagree, the Dems also do this bullshit. I hate both groups, you're fucking morons, please pull your collective heads out of your collective asses and wake up to the fact that China is eating your fucking lunch and western society has become so sclerotic and myopic it can barely meet the needs of its people.
I miss when Western society was the pinnacle of human civilization, and not an ouroboros of rent seekers cannibalizing itself for short term returns at the cost of long term prosperity.
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What is even supposed to be the upside of this idea for Trump himself?
Not getting thrown in jail for the numerous crimes you committed (either real ones, or the ones they will pin on you, like those sexual assault and felony fraud convictions)?
This was juat a way to prevent him from running. They won't do it if he doesn't run to start with.
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JD Vance will not prosecute Trump.
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Being President is more fun than being a very rich political has-been?
I'm not actually sure that's true. I mean the power, yes, but Trump had been able to execute significant amount of power even not being the President. And maybe having quarter of the power and zero responsibility would suit him fine too.
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Maybe this is why he's the president, and I'm just a pleb, but surely, when you're pushing 80 and already have 2 terms behind you, you might want to just chill and hang out with the grandkids?
I 100% agree with you, that is what I would do
But the kind of person who has the conviction, determination and drive to become the president of the USA is also not the kind of person to kick up their feet and cruise control.
I constantly wonder why Elon Musk does anything he's been doing, he seems pretty unhappy and stressed out a lot? If I was worth 100s of billions I'd be living full time on a tropical paradise island that I built into some kind of funhouse compound and I'd have my friends and family rotate in and out to keep me company. Maybe spice it up by going on international trips every other month. I'd be SO MUCH happier than Elon if I had his money.
But Elon is Elon because of that drive. He wouldn't be worth 100s of billions if he didn't have it.
I see it with "retired" successful consultants who then just keep working semi-privately. Their millionaires, why are you still doing this shit? Because they have insane drive and the insane drive is also why they're millionaires. If they could fuck off and relax, they wouldn't have been the massively successful consultants they were/are.
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He can chill with the grandkids while living in the White House, shutting down large parts of the country for "security" when he turns up to play golf, and hearing "Hail to the Chief" when he rocks up at a public event while Susie Wiles and Steven Miller run the country. Given who Trump is, I think he would find this more fun than chilling with the grandkids as a private citizen.
Some people say this has already happened.
Well, if you actually believe any of this, my offer to bet about him running for a third term is still open.
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Presumably the same as whatever the upside was for him running for his 2nd term?
I think what he was getting from his second term was revenge / general "up your's" against the people who messed up his first term. Right now he is being treated as a more or less normal president, so I don't see a reason for him to double-down on spite. Maybe if he actually had a clear and specific vision for the future of the country, I could imagine him desperately clinging on to power to ensure it's correctly implemented. The problem is that:
a) He does not strike me as the kind of man who would have such a vision
b) Even if he was, the safest way to get this sort of thing done is to groom an heir to pass the torch to, and JD Vance is a pretty good candidate for that, and he has a whole bunch of kids and other relatives.
c) If for whatever reason there is no acceptable heir, the only way these sorts of gambits work out, is when you have popular support north of 80%, and I'm pretty sure he knows it.
The same reason Caesar crossed the Rubicon: Survival.
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