Twenty-Second Amendment
Section 1
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 this Article shall not apply to any person holding the office of President when this Article was proposed by the Congress, and shall not prevent any person who may be holding the office of President, or acting as President, during the term within which this Article becomes operative from holding the office of President or acting as President during the remainder of such term.
Section 2
This article shall be inoperative unless it shall have been ratified as an amendment to the Constitution by the legislatures of three-fourths of the several States within seven years from the date of its submission to the States by the Congress.
To make this explicit, the law is what Trump and his merry band of miscreants say it is, unless we’re willing to step up as a country and say ‘No it isn’t’ and back those words up with action, if needed. All the words in the Constitution are is ink on a piece of paper, unless we’re willing to stand and fight for them.
Elected to the office of the President
If you are looking for a loophole, I think there is an argument to be made that if he is elected to the office of the vice president and the president steps down, that would allow a “3rd term”.
I would love to be wrong, but I wouldn’t be shocked if that is the play.
Edit: dhork points out the 12th amendment should block this.
The 12th amendment states
But no person constitutionally ineligible to the office of President shall be eligible to that of Vice-President of the United States
That seems pretty definitive. The only attack to it I can see (and it’s total bullshit) is that the Originalists on this court may insist on interpreting this amendment based on the state of the Constitution when it was ratified in 1804, and the term limits weren’t passed until 1952.
The way around that is making him speaker of the house and having both the president and vice president resign. Speaker doesn’t have any real requirements on it.
