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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.
Is Bannon actually in the authority position for this to mean much? Like hail Trump, hail victory. Bring on the red caesar, it would be very good for my ingroup. But Bannon could well be a loudmouth, and in fact seems to generally be a loudmouth. I would put higher odds on Vance taking the throne by assassination after the midterms than on Trump actually doing this- I dunno, could be wrong. But he's just really old to try to make your long term dictator, and the people that would need to cooperate in it have to know this.
Would it? Do you anticipate your country being ran better in the long run once this happens? Sure it'll be a nice sugar high, but what happens once it's 10 years from now and the rot and corruption that always (always) sets in once groups are established? Especially in cases where the usual checks and balances to prevent anyone from getting too comfortable or destructive?
Will your in group be doing well when your country's bureaucracy runs even worse than it does now, business investment (with knock on effects on the equity market) is more hesitant due to the increased risk from crony capitalism, and the USA has lost its mandate of
heavenleader of the free world and the associated advantages like preferential trade deals and the world reserve currency?Run better than what? If the alternative is Joe Biden's people, or Kamala Harris, or Zohran Mandami, or Gavin Newsom, then yes.
A crony capitalist quasi-autocratic (maybe we need a less inflammatory word that "autocratic" but my point is more "no longer a very democratic form of government that has even less pretense to listen to its citizens or be run well for fear of losing elections") is in no way going to run better than the USA currently.
We know this because the USA is still ran better, today, than the vast majority of counties on Earth. And it is very definitely ran better than the currently crony capitalist quasi-autocratic countries that exist right now.
Also again, what about when the shoe is on the other foot? What if Trump rips a third term, then the American people are so deeply upset with it that they not only elect Kamala Harris (lmao), but they elect her for 12 years straight using the same trick? Would you accept 12 years of Kamalapocalypse in exchange for an extra Trump term? Because that's implicitly an outcome here.
If your response is "well we'd simply ensure the Democrats never win again by cementing red-tribe rule forever" I again direct you to my question of "do you seriously actually think places like Assad Syria or El Salvador are ran better than California?". Governments that no longer need to worry about securing votes go off the rails really fucking fast, every time.
We're talking about Trump getting a third term, not a "crony capitalist quasi-autocratic" government; that's just a bunch of noise that gets thrown at Trump, and it doesn't even make sense alongside one of the other things thrown at him, which is "populist".
Why would they be so upset, when they voted for Trump (or someone they knew would yield to him) for that third term?
51% of the popular vote (for one given election) does not translate to "the entirety of American voters", as you surely understand. You're talking as if "a Democrat getting elected after a Republican" is something that has never happened in the history of U.S.A. After all, if the American people liked the Republican so much they elected him, why ever would they change their mind?
Or do you mean to say that if Trump gets the third term, that'll be the end of the Democrat party?
I'm saying if Trump gets a third term, there is no particular reason to believe "the American people" will be "deeply upset" with it. Sure, a Democrat could win afterwards, but that could happen if J.D. Vance won or even if a Democrat won in 2028. If Trump gets a third term it will because he is extremely popular -- popular enough that a majority of voters were not only willing to vote for him but also willing to overlook the irregularities it took to get there. It won't be deeply upsetting to the American people; they'll have basically given the middle finger to the term limit already.
As it happens, I don't think this will happen. I do not believe Trump will actually try to run again and if he does I believe he will lose. But if he does and wins, there will not be popular backlash to him doing so.
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