Constitutional scholar Laurence Tribe has given his two cents on the possibility of President Donald Trump serving a third term.
The former Harvard professor emphasized that anyone who “discounts” a third Trump term by using the 22nd and 12th Amendments of the Constitution as a defense “is thinking magically.” And he added that the 22nd Amendment doesn’t actually bar a president from serving a third term, but rather prevents them from being elected three times.
In an X post Monday, the Harvard Law professor wrote: “Anyone discounting a 3d Trump term per the 22d am + the 12th am is thinking magically: The 22d dsn’t bar *serving* a 3d term, only being *elected* 3 times.”
“The 12th dsn’t bar running for VP unless ‘ineligible’ to serve as Pres, but Trump isn’t ineligible,” he added. “QED!”
Tribe, who has been publicly critical of Trump over the years, is a trusted advisor to the Democratic Party.
He represented former Vice President Al Gore in the landmark decision Bush v. Gore regarding a dispute over recounting votes in the 2000 election, and served in the Justice Department during former President Barack Obama’s first term, the latter of which used to work for Tribe at Harvard Law.
The 22nd Amendment states: “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.”
This sentiment is echoed in the 12th Amendment, which goes on to say that “no person constitutionally ineligible to the office of President shall be eligible to that of Vice-President of the United States.”
Tribe noted how, per the 12th Amendment, Trump isn’t “ineligible” to serve as vice president, as he is a natural-born citizen of the United States.
Yet Derek Muller, a professor of election law at Notre Dame, believes that if the 22nd Amendment makes Trump ineligible to run for president again, that also makes him ineligible to run for vice president.
The president seems to truly believe that he can manage to snag another term by side stepping constitutional limits, revealing to NBC’s Kristen Welker Sunday that he was “not joking” about considering running for a third term. Trump told Welker that “there are methods which you could do it.”
Welker pressed on the possibility that Vice President JD Vance could run for president in 2029 and hand over the title to Trump, who answered “that’s one” method, “but there are others too.”
When asked to divulge what they were, the president simply said “no.”
Trump also told NBC News that “a lot of people want” him to run again, but that he’s had to tell them that “we have a long way to go, you know, it’s very early in the administration.”
If Trump wanted to change the Constitution, it would require two-thirds of states agreeing on calling a constitutional convention, or two-thirds of Congress passing a proposal, with three-fourths of the states signing off on the change.
