Donald Trump Keeps Teasing a Third Term. Here’s What to Know

Donald Trump’s second term has only just begun, but he and his allies are already teasing the prospect of seeking a third. “I suspect I won’t be running again,”  Trump told his Republican colleagues in the House last November, before caveating: “Unless you say, ‘He’s so good we’ve got to figure something else out.’”

The 22nd Amendment has already had its say: “No person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice, and no person who has held the office of President, or acted as President, for more than two years of a term to which some other person was elected President shall be elected to the office of the President more than once.” 

But the Constitution hasn’t proved to be a deterrent for Trump before.

Trump’s not the first President to think he should have more than eight years in the White House. Democrat Franklin Delano Roosevelt was elected to a fourth term in 1944 before he died in 1945, prompting Republicans in Congress to seek a constitutional amendment to formalize term limits—which had before been just a norm established by George Washington to step aside after two terms, though several sought more. Ulysses Grant and Theodore Roosevelt both unsuccessfully vied for third terms, and Woodrow Wilson planned to, too, until he had a stroke during his second.

Even after the 22nd Amendment’s ratification in 1951, some Presidents have toyed with the idea of a third term. In 1986, Ronald Reagan half-jokingly raised “giving it one more try,” according to a TIME report at the time, which added: “Reagan has come to see the 22nd Amendment as limiting presidential leverage, and believes it should be repealed, effective after he leaves office. ‘It’s only democratic,’ he said, for citizens to vote for a President as many times as they want. Some future President, that is.”

And Barack Obama said in 2015 that he believed he would win if he could run for a third term, but he admitted that he couldn’t because “the law’s the law.”

Trump, however, doesn’t seem so sure about that.

Here’s what to know about a potential Trump third term and what legal experts have to say about it.

What Trump has said about a third term

One of the earliest times Trump has floated the concept of extending his presidency beyond a second term was in 2020, while campaigning for reelection in Reno, Nev. “We’re going to win Nevada and we’re going to win four more years in the White House,” he said. “And then after that we’ll negotiate. Right? Because we’re probably—based on the way we were treated—we’re probably entitled to another four after that.”

In an interview with TIME in April 2024, however, Trump dismissed the idea of challenging the 22nd Amendment. “I’m going to serve one term, I’m gonna do a great job,” he said. “And then I’m gonna leave.” 

But on the trail again in May, at the National Rifle Association’s annual meeting, Trump then said: “You know, FDR 16 years—almost 16 years—he was four terms. I don’t know, are we going to be considered three-term? Or two-term?”

After his reelection, in another interview with TIME, Trump appeared to be somewhat wistful that his last campaign was, seemingly, behind him. “It’s sad in a way. It will never happen again,” he said.

On Jan. 25, after his second-term inauguration, Trump, at an event in Las Vegas, said: “It will be the greatest honor of my life to serve, not once but twice—or three times or four times.” After cheers from his supporters, Trump smiled and said, “headlines, for the fake news,” before clarifying, “no, it will be to serve twice.”

But two days later Trump, speaking to House Republicans in Florida, said: “I’ve raised a lot of money for the next race, that I assume I can’t use for myself, but I’m not 100% sure because—I don’t know, I think I’m not allowed to run again. I’m not sure. Am I allowed to run again, Mike?” He referred to House Speaker Mike Johnson, who was in the audience, before saying, “I better not get you involved in that argument.”

At the National Prayer Breakfast on Feb. 6, Trump said: “They say I can’t run again. That’s the expression. ‘Sir…’ Then somebody said, ‘I don’t think you can.’ Oooh…”

And at a Black History Month reception at the White House on Feb. 20, Trump said, “Should I run again? You tell me. There’s your controversy right there,” as the audience of his supporters began chants of “Four more years! Four more years! Four more years!”

Read More: What the Founding Fathers Said About Kings

How Trump could bend the Constitution

Politico Magazine recently outlined four ways Trump could “snatch a third term—despite the 22nd Amendment,” which it summarized as: change the Constitution, sidestep the Constitution, ignore the Constitution, or defy the Constitution.

Trump’s Attorney General Pam Bondi acknowledged during her confirmation hearing that a third Trump term would require changing the Constitution. And Trump ally Rep. Andy Ogles (R, Tenn.) introduced a joint resolution to try to kickstart that process on Jan. 23. The resolution seeks to amend the Constitution such that “no person shall be elected to the office of the President more than three times, nor be elected to any additional term after being elected to two consecutive terms.” (Critics have suggested the latter clause was included to prevent Obama from taking advantage of such an amendment to seek a third term.)

But despite Republicans holding a majority in both the House and Senate, amending the Constitution has a much higher threshold than normal bill passage. It requires two-thirds support from both chambers and then ratification by three-fourths of the states.

There is “no way” such an amendment would meet those thresholds, says renowned constitutional scholar and dean of UC Berkeley Law Erwin Chemerinsky. Even political opposition aside, David Schultz, political science and legal studies professor at Hamline University, tells TIME: “All of this would have to occur within about a two to three year period at most” in order for Trump to mount a third-term campaign. “Just the logistics and the politics of this renders it—I want to say—nearly impossible.”

The second pathway, according to Politico, is for Trump to “exploit a little-noticed loophole” in the Constitution: the 22nd Amendment says a President who has served two terms cannot be elected to a third one, but it does not say such a President cannot serve a third term. Some have read this as to mean that someone like Trump could ascend to the presidency again from the vice presidency.

Attempting that may run into issues with the 12th Amendment, which says “no person constitutionally ineligible to the office of President shall be eligible to that of Vice-President.” Bruce Peabody, professor of government and politics at Fairleigh Dickinson University in Madison, N.J., tells TIME: “You have to read that eligibility language in kind of creative ways that I think depart a bit from the constitutional text. You have to say, ‘Well, really, what eligibility means is nobody unelectable to the office of President is electable to the office of Vice President.’ Maybe—but why doesn’t it say that then, right?” And even then Trump would have to be appointed Vice President, like Gerald Ford was, before ascending to the Presidency. But Peabody doesn’t rule out Trump giving it a try nonetheless: “We’ve already seen some—to put it lightly—unusual legal arguments from the Trump Administration.”

How Trump could ignore or defy the Constitution

Barring a new constitutional amendment, if Trump tries to run or serve again, it would be up to the courts to stop him.

The Supreme Court—with six of nine justices appointed by Republicans, including three by Trump—could rule in his favor, whether interpreting the 22nd Amendment, as some conservatives have proposed, to only apply to consecutive terms; acceding to the vice-presidential ascension loophole by brushing away 12th Amendment concerns; or otherwise.

Laurence Tribe, professor emeritus of constitutional law at Harvard University and one of the country’s leading experts on the Constitution, rules that possibility out. “The court is extremely pro-Trump, but it’s not insane,” he tells TIME. “This Court would vote nine to nothing that the 22nd Amendment is what it says and means what it was intended to mean.”

Michael Klarman, professor of legal history at Harvard University, is more cautious, given how the Supreme Court ruled on presidential immunity last year. “Bad arguments can win in the Supreme Court when someone wants them to win badly enough,” he says.

There’s also the possibility that Trump could simply refuse to leave office in 2029, Constitution and courts be damned. Vice President J.D. Vance has already put forth the idea that the executive branch should simply ignore the judicial branch—a concept that runs counter to the republic’s foundational separation of powers. And it’s not like Trump didn’t try to cling onto power after losing the 2020 election.

“There definitely are scenarios where he doesn’t even need to embrace this kind of legalistic loophole strategy, and he just tries to hold onto power,” says Peabody, “because that’s what people who like authority sometimes do.”

But that path would likely require significant public support, something legal experts like Klarman and Tribe say is unlikely Trump, who would be 82 by 2029, will be able to maintain.

Tribe thinks there’s little chance of Trump serving more than eight years, by any means: (“Less than the likelihood of an asteroid hitting Singapore tomorrow morning,” he says of the vice-presidential pathway.)

So why then does Trump bring it up so much? “Holding up the third term possibility is a shiny object to distract public attention,” Tribe says.

What matters more, suggests Klarman, is what Trump does over the next four years. “He can easily have gutted democracy in a way that it hardly matters whether he, Don Jr., Elon Musk (yes, there are ways around birthright citizenship as a requirement), or J.D. Vance is formally the President in 2029.”

Correction, Feb. 14
An earlier version of this story incorrectly stated that Woodrow Wilson died during his second term. He had a stroke during his second term but didn’t die until he was out of office.