Bulwark Takes - Trump’s Third Term Talk Is All A Part Of His Power Game

Episode Date: March 30, 2025

Trump teased a third term with NBC this morning. But is he for real or is this just a part of his plan to keep control of the GOP? Sarah Longwell, Mona Charen and Will Saletan get together to discuss.

Hey everybody, Mona Charon here with The Bulwark. I'm here with two of my colleagues, Will Salatin and Sarah Longwell, to give you our immediate reactions to Trump's comments to Meet the Press today that, no, he's not joking. He definitely is considering a third term. Will, how did he put it? And then I want to get to Kristen Welker's reaction, because this is really, it's a small thing, but to me, it's very annoying. So tell us what he said and, you know, spell it out. You've got the transcript. Yeah, I'm looking at the transcript. She, first of all, he didn't bring this up. She brought it up. So and this is a common refrain of a lot of journalists who want to. So that's that's a factor. However, to me, what's new in the interview is that he admits he suggests that he's been talking to people about it. Have you been presented with any potential plans that would allow you to serve a third term? And he says, well, there are plans.

There are well, there are methods by which you could do it. And then she starts asking him and he says, well, she asks about the one where Vance gets elected and then hands it over to Trump. And Trump says, well, that's one. But there are others, too. So clearly, Trump has been talking with people about multiple ways of doing this. That's separate from whether he would actually do it. But that's a new development as far as knowing what he's doing. Sarah, so the Welker, first of all, she says, are you thinking about this? And then he immediately comes out with a complete, you know, lie, exaggeration of his popularity. He says,

well, of course, I'm extremely popular. I'm more popular than any president in the history of the universe. And my popularity ratings are right now in the high 70s. He says, as you know, he always does this with journalists, as you know. And instead of saying, well, actually, sir, you're underwater in your popularity. She's just like, oh, but how, what ways are you thinking of in terms of getting a third term? As if this is a real thing, as if there are legal pathways to, for him to serve a third term. Did it bother you? So here's the thing. So I, did you watch it or did you read the transcript? Okay. So I also read it and this, but they jumped out at me because she wasn't just saying, she wasn't just that she didn't push back. She kept saying, right, right. Like she kept like affirming it. Now, having not watched it, I was quite certain though, that she was trying to like,

yeah, like she's kind of doing like, I assume. yeah, yeah, but like answer my question. But it has the consequence of affirming or normalizing or acting like it is not preposterous and flagrantly unconstitutional to do this. And then worse, and I don't necessarily want to pick on Welker specifically, but it was bizarre that she threw out the Vance switcheroo as though like, could this be your strategy? I'm like, why are you giving him ideas? I mean, sure, it's obvious, but it's like, why are you pitching these things to him? Stop doing that. Don't do that. And making it, giving it legitimacy, right? Because obviously it's not just like MAGA weirdos who are having these thoughts. It's people at NBC News. It's NBC News anchors who also think that you can, well, this would be a clever way. I mean, so, well, one of the things that struck me was for all those people who are constantly

saying he would never do X, right? Oh, he wouldn't do that. He wouldn't do that. You know, after January 6th, after seeking a violent mob on the Capitol and attempting to stage a coup, how anyone in their right mind can say he would never do X just bewilders me, right? He would never take it. He might go after some illegal immigrants who are here and deport them, but he's not going to go after green card holders, right? I mean. Well, okay. I'll be the skeptic here. I'll be the skeptic because I've been a skeptic all along. This nudges me a little bit away from that, but I'm still skeptical. You raised the January 6th situation.

That was really not that legally complicated in the sense that Trump claimed that he had just won his second election and it had been stolen from him. So he didn't have to mess with constitutional amendments or any of that. He had to come up with some fans. He had to get John Eastman in. And it's clear that in this situation, he would get another John Eastman, maybe John Eastman himself to like, come up with a legal theory about, you know, the legal theory is the 22nd amendment only says you can't be elected to a third term, but you could not be elected to president. You could be elected vice president. And then the president, i.e. J.D. Vance, hands it over to you. So that's a loophole. So you'd have to go through that. It's a much more difficult process legally in terms of coming up with an argument why the text allows him to do this than it was to just say an election was

stolen from him. So I'm not sure that he would cross that threshold or that the public would elect him if there's sort of a widespread understanding that this is fake. We say you're voting for J.D. Vance, but you're really voting for Trump. Sarah, I'm not sure I agree with Will on this. What about you? Well, I agree with Will in the sense that I think if he did it, it would, because now we're talking about what an 82-year-old Donald Trump saying he's going to run for a third term.

I think it doesn't fly. And actually, there's part of me that's like, give it a run, bro. Like, I want to see you try this. And Barack Obama could run. Yeah, that's right. And we'll just live in hell. We'll just live in hell, and time is a flat circle, and we'll never live in hell. We'll just live in hell and time is a flat circle and we'll never move forward ever. One of the reasons I was interested in jumping on, though, is that Bill and I did a Substack Live this morning and we were talking about what it would take to beat Trump.

One of the things I've been arguing is, and this is not a revelation, but like we need to get Trump down to the 30s. I argue 32 percent is where he really people start to abandon him. And one of the reasons that I think he needs to be down low and that we should all be focused on lowering his approval rating is that nobody's going to speculate about him running again if he's in the 30s. Right. Like and he can start to say he's in the 70s when he's in the 30s. But like that chasm is too too far for the truth to stretch i think like he can stretch the truth pretty far uh especially with his people but that is too far to stretch and at that point you're talking about most of the normies and the reason some people are saying like why do you think 32 i think 32 is basically cult numbers like that is what his cult is people who will never abandon him under any circumstances. But I do think people, once you're saying, oh, I'm going to do this fake thing with J.D. Vance, like people, I don't think people like that. What I think Will might not be right about is the idea that he wouldn't try. Like an 82-year-old Trump who at this point is dealing with a totally supine

Congress. Maybe he loses the midterms, but it's not. It's a little bit like last time where they lose, but it's narrow and it's not so bad. And it's not like a thorough repudiation, because this has always been my argument with Trump. And it's the thing we've never gotten, which is a thorough repudiation of Trump. He has lost, but it has not been a thorough repudiation ever. And we're going to have to have that to move not just past Trump, but a past like this moment. And so I'm not sure he won't try, but it would be interesting to watch him. I also think, look, I've been sitting there like, okay, so they're gaming this out. What are lawyers telling him? It's flagrantly

unconstitutional. So they're like, Supreme Court though, they could, I mean, isn't that the play? They'd have to somehow challenge it up to the Supreme Court and the Supreme Court would have to side with him? I mean, actually, so this, this harkens back to a argument that we had. Remember when there was the big discussion about whether the 14th Amendment should forbid him from even being on the ballots in states because he was ineligible because he had participated in an insurrection. In this case, it really would be up to the secretaries of state of the various states of the union to say, I'm sorry, the Constitution says you're ineligible to run if you've already served two terms, therefore we cannot put you on

the ballot. I don't think it even goes to the Supreme Court. But I'd be curious to hear both of you on another topic, which is this, it seems to me, you know, it's so hard to know, like, what is the civic knowledge and what are the norms that still beat in the breasts of Americans, you know, and, and do they still have a visceral sense that in this country, we don't have Kings. We don't have, you know, we, we abide by the concept by the term limits and the constitution, and this is just wrong. And I, you know, I don't know. What do you guys say? I mean,

it seems to me that this unlike as Will was saying earlier, unlike arguing about a stolen election or, you know, the electoral count act or anything, this is so obvious. It's so blatant. It's so flagrant. What do you think? But then again, he's done other really blatant flagrant, horrible things and gotten away with them. I'm not going to count on that. What I am going to count on is fatigue. Fatigue doesn't require any rules. People just get tired of you. They get tired of, you know, unless you have some means like Vladimir Putin has of throwing people out of windows and, you know, getting rid of all opposition. People are just going to get, they're not going to want Donald Trump to be president

forever. And the guy just, he grates on people over time. So I count on that. But let me just put forward an alternative theory of what's going on here. I don't think he's planning to run for a third term, but I think he loves the idea to be out there that he might because he doesn't want to be a lame duck, right? And he has always wanted power. My theory up to this point has been that Trump doesn't intend to run for a lame duck, right? And he has always wanted power. My theory up to this point has been that Trump doesn't intend to run for a third term, but he can always exert power over the Republican Party. If Donald Trump marshals people against you in a primary, you're dead. So he will always have power. But maybe he thinks that by fostering this idea out there that he could run for a third term, even if he doesn't plan to,

he keeps going the idea that Donald Trump will always be around, will always have the ability to punish you, Mr. and Mrs. Republican congressperson. And that gives him power in the short term. Can I just push back on Will, though? And Sarah, does it also? Oh, yeah, you can. But also answer this if you wouldn't mind does it also perhaps inhibit um those republicans who might be gearing up to think yeah i mean this is the thing where it's so much of this is conditional right so i'm talking

about a scenario in which he's underwater deeply underwater in approval but let's say hypothetically, economy's roaring. He has rebuilt our manufacturing base. The car companies are all in the US now. We have stopped our global trade. Tariffs are working and he is at 55% and people are begging him for a third term. Okay, then I think with tears in their eyes. And I want Will Salatin to tell me if he's at 55%, he doesn't make a run for it. Also, wait, second condition, it's all conditional, right? Also, the condition is Kamala Harris has won the Democratic primary versus most a lot of other people versus Mark Cuban, or, you know, Josh Shapiro, whatever. So let's say Kamala's running against him. He's at 55 approval. He's got a story to tell about how he brought back American manufacturing. Will Salatin, tell me he's not running for a third term under those

circumstances. Man, Sarah, you have really stacked the hypothetical. You've got Kamala Harris, somebody he thinks he can beat. By the way, you guys brought up Obama coming back. Like, you may be former Republicans. I'm not. I like that. I'll take Obama against Trump. I would take it, too.

I guess I'm just sort of like, do we have to, can we not, do we get to not move forward in time ever? I was just mentioning it, though, because I don't know that they've thoroughly thought this through. I mean, if we no longer have a two term limit. Mona, you don't think they've thought something through? Amazing. I know. So, OK, we'll go go back to the hypothetical. This is the eternal question. Does Donald Trump care more about power or ego? I mean, they converge, but they also diverge. You know, he loves the idea of people wanting him. Does he want their, I mean, she asked him in the interview, do you want the responsibility? And he's like, I like working. Oh, come on. He doesn't, it's all about being adored. It's all about the poll ratings. And if the poll ratings aren't good, it's the fake.

It's the, he literally says the real polls have me at 70%. So it's all about this North Korea style ego. So I just don't know if Donald Trump actually wants power the way that Kim Jong-un or President Xi or Putin want power. I mean, he's doing more than I thought he would, but I still think he's fundamentally a narcissist. He's not really about the power. And so when you get to that moment, Sarah, where it's like, do I actually run again and try to do the job again?

Sorry, I don't buy this for one second. And the reason is we said this last time. Like before when it was like, will he come back and run again? There were people who were arguing like, he doesn't really want the job. He just wants to, and he did it. I don't know how many more, how many times do we have to be beaten over the head on this?

He will take, and he's not, sorry. It's two versus three. Go ahead. It's a different proposition. He will take this as far as he thinks he can go. That's right. And I don't think that he is behaving right now as somebody who just wanted a sinecure. He's got an agenda.

He wants to remake the entire country in his image and he's going about it. I would say kind of aggressively. So yeah, I think he, he does want power. He's using power in a way we've never seen in American history. So, uh, yeah, he will, he definitely, he definitely wants power. I have one question for you, Sarah, maybe we can close on this.

So yeah, I love the idea of Donald Trump being able to drive down his approval of 32%, but I'm not sure that's within our power. I mean, how do you do that? If everything goes his way, come on. So you can go watch my 36 minutes I did with Bill this morning, because I did a lot of this. And Mona, you've heard me talk about this. But listen, either one of two things is going to happen in terms of the speed at which Donald Trump and his minions like Elon are dismantling the government, imposing tariffs and enacting this agenda. Very fast, they're doing it. Faster they do the agenda, faster the consequences of the agenda. And so are we going to invade and annex Greenland? Are we? I mean, I do think that Donald Trump,

so how are we going to do it? I mean, we are going to tell the story and help amplify the stories of the negative personal consequences of the impact of Donald Trump's agenda on people, especially his voters. That's number one. But number two, Donald Trump is going to do a lot of this by having terrible policies and acting as though and this is where I think it sort of relates back to this discussion. He's acting as though he doesn't need to get reelected in four years. He's acting like a lame duck. He's acting like a person who can act without electoral consequences. And so I think that he's doing Hail Mary, doing exactly what he wants to do, and it will either work and he will be popular and he will pursue a third term or it will not work. It will have tremendous negative consequences

on the electorate. People will abandon him who are not cult-like. Because cult-like people will be like, well, I'll pay $20,000 more for that car, sir, because you, sir, are of, I want to be part of your 10-dimensional chess genius idea of tariffs and really stick it to the Canadians. Maybe. And Denmark had it coming, damn it. So there's 32% of people who will do that. The question is, what about the rest of those people? And that's why it's always margins. It's always margins. Yeah. Okay. So in other words, what you're saying, if I understand it correctly, is Trump is going to do this for us. I mean, there's absolutely nothing that we're going to be doing. He is going to do things that are going to make him unpopular and it's a matter of waiting him

out. So that's- Well, so no, because I want to make this clear. It's exactly not the Carville strategy. It is letting Trump do it. But the problem with the Carville strategy, and I want to make this clear. It's exactly not the Carville strategy. It is letting Trump do it. Okay. But the problem with the Carville strategy, and I hate the Carville strategy, and I hate strategies where the strategy is do nothing and everything will work out. No. The Democrats have had a problem this whole time with not being able to communicate. What does Donald Trump do?

When Donald Trump is in office, he runs around going, best economy for women, best economy for black people. How's your 401k, buddy? Democrats are in office and he's like, worst economy ever. Joe Biden has destroyed America. No, we have to do our part in making sure that when people start saying, my goodness, he's got social security or my goodness, he has enacted these tariffs. We need to make sure we are amplifying or telling the story of the damage that this is doing. Because if you just sit back and let Trump control this narrative, you will lose it.

We have been shown that time and time again. So you can't just sit there and wait for it to happen. Amen, sister. All right, Will, Sarah, thanks so much for joining me on this, I guess we could call this an emergency take on the Trump third term.