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SHORTLY AFTER HIS inauguration in January, US president Donald Trump joked that he’d like to serve more than two terms in the White House.
“It will be the greatest honour of my life to serve not once, but twice – or three times or four times,” Trump joked with a smile.
“Headlines for the fake news,” he added.
Trump then clarified that he’ll only serve two terms – the maximum amount a US president is legally allowed to remain in office.
But in recent days, Trump has claimed that he is no longer joking and that there are “methods” to allow him to defy the two-term limit stipulated in the US Constitution.
On Sunday morning, Trump said he might seek a third term as president but this time claimed he wasn’t joking.
In a phone call with NBC News, Trump was asked about a scenario whereby Vice President JD Vance was elected president in 2028 with Trump as his running mate, and then Vance steps aside for Trump.
“That’s one method,” said Trump, “but there are others too.”
Trump said “I’m not joking” when asked to clarify his remarks.
The 78-year-old has a long history of suggesting he might serve more than two terms, but these remarks – followed by comments to reporters aboard Air Force One – were the most concrete in terms of referring to plans in place to achieve the goal.
“We have almost four years to go and that’s a long time but despite that so many people are saying you’ve got to run again. They love the job we’re doing,” Trump said Sunday aboard the presidential jet.
Trump then repeated his claim that American want him to run for a third term, telling reporters in the Oval Office yesterday: “People are asking me to run.”
“I don’t know. I never looked into it. They do say there’s a way you can do it, but I don’t know about that, but I have not looked into it,” Trump added.
He was asked about the prospect of a race pitting him against former president Barack Obama, who served two terms.
“That would be a good one, I’d like that,” Trump said.
On Fox News yesterday, Trump’s press secretary Karoline Leavitt was asked about the prospect of Trump running for a third term.
“It’s funny to me that journalists ask the president this question – he gives an honest and candid answer – and then they spiral about his answer,” Leavitt told Fox News.
“He was asked this, and you heard him, and he’s right,” she added.
America’s first president, George Washington, set a precedent by stepping down after serving two terms in office.
Only one US president – Democrat Franklin D. Roosevelt – has served more than two terms in the White House.
Roosevelt was elected president four times – in 1932, 1936, 1940 and 1944.
His fourth term ended prematurely with his death on 12 April, 1945 at the 63.
The Great Depression and the Second World War and are often cited for his extended presidency.
The two-term precedent set by Washington was only formally codified more than 150 years later by the 22nd Amendment to the US Constitution.
The 22nd Amendment limiting a president to two terms in office was passed in 1947 – two years after Roosevelt’s death – by two-thirds of the House of Representatives and two-thirds of the Senate.
It was ratified by three-quarters of the 50 US state legislatures in 1951.
The text states: “No person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice.”
It also bars a president who has served more than two years “of a term to which some other person was elected President” from being elected again more than once.
Meanwhile, NBC News asked Trump about a scenario where Vance won the presidency and then step aside for a vice president Trump.
The 12th Amendment however rules that option out.
“No person constitutionally ineligible to the office of President shall be eligible to that of Vice-President of the United States,” it states.
Amending the US Constitution to allow a third presidential term would require a two-thirds majority in both the House of Representatives and Senate, which Trump’s Republican Party does not have.
Another option would be a constitutional convention called by two thirds of the states that would propose changes to the charter.
Both routes appear to be unlikely, given the current number of states and Congressional seats under Republican control.
Whether he goes through Congress or the states, Trump would then require ratification from three-quarters of all state legislatures.
A constitutional convention has never been successfully called in the US, and all 27 constitutional amendments have been passed by the congressional method.
Elsewhere, Republican lawmaker Andy Ogles of Tennessee introduced a long shot resolution in January calling for a constitutional amendment that would allow a president who served non-consecutive terms to serve a third term.
This would mean that of all the living US presidents, only Trump would benefit from this change.
Barack Obama, Bill Clinton and George W Bush all served consecutive terms, whereas Trump won in 2016, lost in 2020, and won again in 2024.
However, the high bar for constitutional amendments, Ogles’ plans are incredibly unlikely to come to anything.
Meanwhile, most constitutional scholars agree that there are no viable methods to allow Trump to run for a third term, as he claimed over the weekend.
“I don’t think there’s any ‘one weird trick’ to getting around presidential term limits,” Derek Muller, an election law professor at the University of Notre Dame, told the BBC.
The New York Times’s White House Correspondent Tyler Page has said that Trump’s calls for a third term could be a way to distract from other controversies, such as the Signal Group chat.
This involved journalist and The Atlantic’s editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg being added to a group chat titled “Houthi PC small group” by National Security Adviser Michael Waltz.
Page added that the threat of a third Trump term could also be a way to prevent Trump from becoming a “lame duck” president.
In the case of Trump, he could be considered a lame duck president because it’s known he cannot be re-elected and his strength may diminish over time as a result.
“It reads like somebody who doesn’t want to be treated like a lame duck and is throwing it out there right now,” said Muller.
-With additional reporting from - © AFP 2025
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