Donald Trump's third-term musings seem more tease than serious pledge

President Donald Trump has just started his second term, his last one permitted under the US Constitution. But he's already started making quips about serving a third one.

Am I allowed to run again? Trump joked during the House Republican retreat in Florida last month. Whether teasing or taunting, it seems to be part of a pattern. Just a week after he won election last fall, Trump suggested in a meeting with House Republicans that he might want to stick around after his second term was over.

"I suspect I won't be running again unless you say, He's so good we got to figure something else out,' Trump said to laughs from the lawmakers.

Over the years, Trump and his supporters have often joked about him serving more than his two constitutionally permitted terms. But his musings often spark alarm among his critics, given that he unsuccessfully tried to overturn his 2020 election loss and has since pardoned supporters who violently attacked the US Capitol on Jan 6, 2021.

But Trump, who will be 82 when his term ends, has repeatedly said that this will be his last term. Trying for another also would flatly violate the Constitution.

Here are some questions and answers related to Trump's occasional comments about a third term:  What does the Constitution say?  No person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice, begins the 22nd Amendment, adopted after President Franklin Delano Roosevelt was elected four times in a row. He was last elected in 1944.

It's a fairly straightforward ban on serving more than two terms. Some Trump supporters argue the language is meant to apply only to two consecutive terms because Roosevelt's terms were consecutive, but notably that's not what the amendment says.

Others contend that because the ban is just on being elected" more than twice, Trump could run as the next president's vice president and, if the ticket won, could simply replace that person if he or she resigns. To put it mildly, that would be quite a complex plan to pull off, in no small part because Trump would be 82 during the next election, a year older than former President Joe Biden was during last year's campaign.

At least one Republican in Congress has been bold enough to propose a constitutional amendment that would allow Trump to seek another term. It has no chance of going anywhere, given the high bar for amending the Constitution.

Who would stop Trump?  Even assuming Trump would attempt another run, a combination of election officials and courts would virtually ensure that he stayed off the ballot.

State officials have long kept would-be candidates off presidential ballots if they didn't meet the basic constitutional criteria, such as being a natural-born U.S. citizen or being at least 35 years old. They would do the same with someone clearly violating the limit on presidential terms.

A version of this unfolded in 2023, when a few states tried to keep Trump off the ballot because they found he violated the 14th Amendment's ban on officials who engaged in insurrection. The U.S. Supreme Court reversed those decisions because no one had ever used the insurrection clause on a presidential candidate before and there were a lot of legal questions about its implementation.

There would be no similar questions about the meaning of the 22nd Amendment, said Derek Muller, a professor at Notre Dame Law School.

You would not have the factual disputes, so it would be much wider, Muller said of the number of states keeping Trump off their ballots. I'm not persuaded the Supreme Court is going to roll over.

So why is Trump doing this?  Trump has a long history of taunting his critics to flex his power, but there also could be a strategic reason for his keeping the third-term discussion alive.

Trump is a lame duck president in his final term. Because these politicians will never be on the ballot for the same office again, their political clout usually wanes quickly. The third-term flirtation is a way to try to convince people that Trump will be around in the future.

Trump's aggressive actions at the start of his new term shows that Trump knows his time is dwindling, Muller said.

He's governing like he's a lame duck right now, with nothing to lose, Muller said.