Amending the United States Constitution so that incumbent President Donald Trump could be elected to a third term would take too long and there is no way to do it, declared on Tuesday the Republican Speaker of the US House of Representatives, Mike Johnson. TASR informs about it according to a Reuters report.
The head of the White House did not publicly rule out re-candidacy in the next elections in 2028. however, he is currently prevented from doing so by the 22nd amendment of the supreme law, which limits the number of four-year presidential terms to two.
“I’d love to do it – I’ve got the best numbers ever,” answered Trump on Monday when asked about the statements of his former adviser and one of the main ideologues of the movement Make America Great Again (Let’s make America great again) Steve Bannon. He recently proposed the idea of Trump running for a third term in an interview with The Economist weekly. According to Bannon, there is a plan to keep Trump in office beyond 2029.
According to Politico magazine, Johnson said at a press conference on Tuesday that he had spoken with Trump about the possibility of running again, but that he could not imagine how to do so under the current conditions. “Well, we have the 22nd Amendment,” stated the Speaker of the Chamber, saying that the president of the USA knows what the constitution says, while the effort to possibly change it would take too long.
“I don’t see a way to change the constitution because as you all know it takes about ten years, for all states to ratify (the amendment) approved by two-thirds of the House of Representatives and three-quarters of the states,” Johnson said. “We will release what the plan is at the appropriate time,” he added.
Trump (79) was president for the first time in 2017-2021. He started his second term in office in January of this year. He often claims that his followers would see him in office even after the end of the current mandate. He recently displayed a red cap with the slogan “Trump 2028” on his Oval Office desk.
Some of his supporters suggest that he avoid the 22nd Amendment by running for vice president. In case of victory, he would then return to the office of the head of state, which would be vacated by the resignation of the newly elected president.
“It wouldn’t be right,” Trump responded to these suggestions, while refusing to rule out the possibility that he could become president for a third time. “I didn’t really think about it,” he claimed. He mentioned current Vice President JD Vance or Secretary of State Marco Rubio as his possible successors.
