The Chaser Report - Viva La King Trump

Episode Date: April 2, 2025

Trump is floating going for a third term as King of the USA, and Charles and Dom welcome all the efforts in his case to make this happen. Everything is fine, and there is nothing to see here.Watch OPTICS on ABC iview here:https://iview.abc.net.au/show/opticsCheck out more Chaser headlines here:https://www.instagram.com/chaserwar/?hl=enGive us money:https://chaser.com.au/support/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Chaser Report is recorded on Gadigal Land. Striving for mediocrity in a world of excellence, this is The Chaser Report. Hello and welcome to The Chaser Report with Dom and Charles. And Charles, today we have to assess something which I think was originally floated as a joke, but maybe it wasn't a joke. That is Donald Trump as king for life of the United States of America, sorry, president for life of the United States of America. You know that thing where someone says something and they say, oh, it's funny joking. My daughter does this, actually. Yeah.

But actually, they did this serious. And with your daughter, I presume it's something like, I was thinking of just having some chocolate from the fridge. Yeah. And then you go, no, that would be a bad idea. And she'd go, oh, no, I'm just joking. Ha ha. Ha ha.

And then she said, but there is a mechanism. I wish I could do it if I wanted to. Which is true. She could sneak down while I was asleep and get the chocolate. Yeah. So, yes, I mean, America as the beacon of the world's democracy, already somewhat dimmed, some might say, is genuinely looking quite problematic. Yes. Well, Trump has said he's not joking about wanting a third term. He actually just wants to have it.

In an interview with NBCN, he's curious that he talked to the mainstream media, by the way, Charles. He insists that there are methods to overcome the two-term limits. Any thoughts about what the methods might be? You have a little bit of a ponder about how he might do it. We'll pick it up after this method of making money. So the first one and the one that I think everyone assumes he'd use is and has been widely sort of touted online, is what he'd do is he'd run for vice president under J.D. Vance at the end of his term. And then the moment J.D. Vance got elected, J.D. Vance would resign, thus making Trump be president again without him having to be elected.

Because the 24th Amendment of the United States Constitution just says you can't be elected more than twice. Yes. And so everyone's sort of going, well, that's a little, you know, tricky little trick that Trump can use. The problem is that at least by convention, or it's always been widely assumed that when you run for vice president, you have to be qualified to be president. And so that would raise the thorny legal question. The problem is, where would that thorny legal question be heard? It would be heard in front of the Supreme Court. Oh, yes, them. Who are likely to go, oh, well, actually, you know, that 24th Amendment didn't really mean what it meant, you know, on paper. Yeah, I mean, Charles, to be fair to those conservative legal scholars, they're what's called originalists. And the idea

is that they go back to the founding document, whether it's been put together by the original founding fathers or by the people who amended it. They look at the scholarship of the time, and they sort of work out what the intentions were, the people who drafted the law. And they honor those intentions, unless it helps their side of politics, in which case they do the exact opposite. Yes, exactly. And I think they're on fairly firm ground here, which is because originally the American Constitution didn't have a 24th Amendment. Well, was it Roosevelt that ran four times? Yeah, it was only after the 24th Amendment was put into the Constitution, but it wasn't

originally part of the Constitution. They were very happy to have, you know, George Washington. George Washington was the one who left after two terms. But there are other mechanists. So Trump sort of went, oh, well, that's one way of doing it, but there are other ways of doing it, but he didn't go into. He didn't want to specify it. Well, it's quite funny because when you, it's worth noting that having a puppet vice president

and then coming back in is basically what Vladimir Putin did in Russia. There was a constitutional limit, which they've now removed, of course, on the number of terms you'd have as president of Russia. So his lackey, I think, Dmitri Medvedev, whatever his name was. He ran for president. He had to be the prime minister. He ran as president, and then Putin was president. Putin was prime minister, but then obviously ran the show from the shadows.

From the prime ministership. Although it's interesting because during that four years where Medvedev was supposedly, the president of Russia. Even then, there were just a few moments where Medvedev didn't do exactly what Putin wanted and a sort of distance opened up between this guy, just on a few issues. And it was quite interesting to watch Putin sort of trying to make the calculation of, well, do I just stamp him out publicly or sort of thing? So I think Putin sort of felt that that was a bit of a failed experiment.

Not a great system. Yeah. And that's why they, as soon as you got back into being president, Because his whole thing was, oh, it just meant twice in a row that you couldn't do. But then he very quickly went, okay, let's just scrap the hole. Yeah, and Medvedev, I think, didn't walk near any windows during the whole of that four-year period. Yes, yes. So that's one option.

And it's interesting because the Constitution, despite, it's kind of extraordinary that they tried to close his loophole and did it in such a dumb way that it's completely ambiguous. So that's one option. If you assume J.D. I don't think it's in any way ambiguous unless you're a Trump lawyer. No, Charles. but it says you can't run to be president. You can't be elected. You can't be elected.

Yes. You can't be elected president more than twice. It's pretty fucking clear. I mean, arguably, you're elected if you're vice president. Well, the vice president is supposed to be eligible, yeah. So the professor of law from Northwestern University, Jeremy R. Paul quoted here saying under any reasonable interpretation, he can't run again. Yeah, so the problem is, what about an unreasonable?

And Paul says it would be ludicrous, but also it doesn't matter because. it would just go to the Supreme Court. Like, whatever I say is irrelevant because the Supreme Court will do what it does. Okay, so there's a sort of a fairly safe option I would have thought for Trump. He probably can do it that way. Who's going to stop him? But I don't think that that's necessarily the way he is going to do it because I think that there's a lot of easier ways to do it.

Oh, yeah. What would you do? One of which is, like, this is four years away, right? Yeah. Like, you'd have to guess that half the world will be at war against America. Oh, emergency pass. I like an American power. Yes.

And even if, even if they're not a war, won't, like, say, you know, it's 100 days out from the supposed election, you could just sort of go, oh, wait a minute, I just found some Venezuelans in my basement. There's now needs to be, you know, emergency laws. Or, oops, the Congress building just caught fire. Oh, dear, we'll need some emergency powers. Like, there's lots of ways where you can manufacture a bit of an emergency. Yeah.

And. Oh, that's trick in the book. Yeah, exactly. There's also a very honourable representative by the name of Andy Ogles from Tennessee. He wants to amend the Constitution. He's actually doing it sort of making it legal. So his amendment would be not that you get rid of the – you have a third term limit, but you say that if you're going to have two terms, they've got to be consecutive.

So Trump could, in theory, be elected for a second term as long as someone else thing goes again and then he can go again after that. You can have two terms as a maximum and then go away and come back again if you want. So that would be at least an open way of going about it. Imagine being such a toady that you use your time in Congress to do that. Number one bill, when Congress met for the first time, that was his bill. To sort of suck up the ass of Trump. It is very hard to do that because you need to have, I think it's two-thirds of the state's ruling in favor and two-thirds of the House and the Senate.

But if they manage to stack the next election, the midterms, then maybe they could. Well, I think, let's just project forward over the next two years and go, I think it's a dead certainty that the US will end. up with Greenland, probably at some point in the next year or so. And they'll be a state. And the thing is, the most popular thing you can do as a leader of a country is to annex more land without a fight. Like, look at Hitler in 36. He just picked up Austria, became unassailably popular within Germany because it turned out

he could just take all that land, right? And I think, and this is why I think it's going to happen really quickly is because the you wait, the more Europe will organise against it. So it just makes sense to, you know, go quickly. And also, there's some chips on the table with Russia. Like, the other obvious country that would want Greenland is Russia, of course. Yes. Oh, no, no, that's very unfair to China. That would probably have it. Yeah. But you just go, actually, if Putin wants Ukraine, like Trump can just do a deal over Ukraine and go, okay, you can get Eastern Ukraine and we'll take Greenland.

And I think that that would be a deal that all the superpowers in the world, nuclear superpowers in the world, would sort of get on board with. Have you heard what they're doing in Greenland actually now? They're selling MAGA hats. What? Maga hats are available freely in Greenland. They say, make America go away. Right.

Yeah, so that's one way you could do it. I mean, other ways you could do it. Just not have an election. Like, just don't, just don't do any of that stuff. Just forget. Just don't. Who's going to make him? He's always the question.

And also, if Do, you know, does a good job on cutting public service jobs, there won't be anyone left to call the elections. No. Although they're not running the 50th. They're running the States. What you could do is so you've got to think bigger Charles. Think about the Gulf of America. Yes. And you can change things. So you just call it America on the maps. You just literally say. You can have one town. Yeah, that's one very Republican town. Yeah. And you just redistrict everything to be like Mara Lago is America. Yeah. That would be one way to do it. Another Charles is who defines. what a year is, right? You get four years in office. What if, by executive order, each year was worth 10 of our years? What if American standard years were, I don't know, four thousand days

long. Donald Trump would have a very, very long time still to rule. These are the things he can change. This is the thing. Derek has never had the hutspar for this. Imagine if Barack Obama had at the end of his two successful terms as president. Yes. Put Joe Biden, I actually was thinking about this at the time, is their rule against this. Could Biden run with Obama as VP? They could have done it as a serious thing, or switcherud Obama back in. What if... What if Donald Trump changes his name? Oh, that's good to say, I don't know, some other name.

Like, it could be anyway. It could be like George Clooney. But he already likes the name Barron. We know... Oh, Barron. Remember he used to ring up all the magazines and the papers in New York going, this is Baron, John Barron, Mr. Trump's a very successful man with lots of beautiful girlfriends.

And he runs his son. president. We could have the first teen president. Oh, that's, I could see Barron, I, because I'm sure Don Jr. thinks it's going to be him. Actually, that's how you do it. Yeah. He'd run Donald Jr. And then you'd say, due to an administrative error, the other Donald Trump is the one who's

duly elected. Yes. And if you can supply your own electors though, Charles. You know how they've had the whole plot this time they didn't need to just recruit their own Yeah, yeah. Why can't the electors just say, Oh, Donald J. Trump is the Julie elected next president of, from Because that would still be them electing. Yeah, but the Supreme Court would have to...

Maybe, because wait a minute. They can't have a writing campaign, because we're thinking about this all wrong. You're not allowed to be elected. President for more than two terms. But you can be appointed by the Supreme Court. Or just like by yourself. By yourself, by executive order. You can just have as many terms as you like, as long as you're not elected.

That's the key. So you just get rid of the election part. That's it. I've always felt that elections really got in the way of democracy. Yeah. Let's just take a little break and look at whether there are any implications for Australia because we're already debating the length of federal parliamentary terms in this country. Yes.

Maybe there's something here for Alba and Peter Dutton. The Chaser Report, news a few days after it happens. So Alba has always said that he hates three-year terms and he'd much prefer four-year terms at a federal level. With fixed intervals, a bit like the New South Wales and Victoria elections. Yeah, and look, Peter Dutton said he agrees with that. idea, but not yet. But it's quite funny because they actually, both of them have said we wouldn't do a referendum on this the other side agrees. At least Albo said that recently. Yeah. And they do agree, but they still won't do it. Yes, yes. And last time it was proposed,

the Libs opposed it anyway. Yeah, this has been tried before. Yeah, it was 1980, 1986, yeah. So that was the Australia card referendum. Oh, yes, that was, um, ironic. Remember when we thought that a little plastic card would violate our privacy? Yeah, having, having a number attached. to our identity would be the worst thing ever. The way that we all do with our tax file numbers and my go and all the other things. Yeah. And, I mean, social media are the ones who've got the real dossiers on us.

Now, forget about the Australian government. It's the least of our worries. Yeah. Mine doesn't even work half the time. Anytime I try to log into any website with my driver's license, it doesn't work. Well, you can I borrow your driver's license just to see whether that works? Sure. I think, don't you already have the details from the dark way?

I think Optus leaked it on there or something. Okay, so the point is with Australia, they both agree, but they don't want a referendum, maybe the whole point is we've got to use some of the Trump magic on Australia and go, maybe you can change the Australian constitution without needing an election. Without anything, because the whole problem is the referendum's always failed. It's very hard to get them up, yeah. So we do a Trump-style thing where we just change the constitution.

Oh. And we get the high court to, like, so Alba would need to stack out the high court. That's the key. Well, this is what Donald Trump has shown is that you don't need to do what the lawyers say. You don't need to comply with what the legal experts will tell you if you have your own legal experts on the court who can't be sacked. Yes. So interpret things the way you want. I mean, and that's absolutely true.

Like just a couple of days ago, Trump started sending what he claims were illegal immigrants to El Salvador again. Yes, on those flights. Against the orders of the court, direct orders of the court. The court literally said turn the planes around now. on the basis that, I don't know, we're using a different justification for it this time. So your ruling is invalid. That was what Trump said to the judge. The judge was very unhappy with that outcome.

But then what was he able to do about it? Yeah, exactly. What's he going to do? What's he going to do? And no one said this enough of the courts, of the police. What are you going to do about it if I don't do what you want? Yeah. And the answer was always, we'll take you to court.

Yes. But then when you go to court, if the court just goes, what the big powerful person said, that's what we do. Yeah. Yeah. So I think it's all, I think it'll be fine. It's just, you just do stuff. Yeah, I think we should be on the record at this point, Charles,

saying that we definitely are okay with all this. It's not something you take a stance on. No, no, no, no, no, because that would. That would anger them. Anger them, yeah. And they have all the power, you see. Well, especially when you don't have any projections. From the rule of law.

From the rule of law. Yes, yeah. It's nice to know where you stand, though, isn't it? At least it clarifies. And also, they've gotten rid of habeas corpus, haven't they? So you don't even, because isn't the whole point that the whole, you know, sending people down to El Salvador, they can't even, which one's, which one's, which one's? I was already suspended from Guantanamo. Oh, so that's, that's old news.

Oh, yeah, Harvey Scopus has gone along. So which one, what's heavy Scorbanian? I actually can't remember. Yeah, it's like, you're allowed to defend yourself or something. I think it might be where you actually are allowed to face the charges of life. You're allowed to face, yeah. And the whole point is you can't face it if you're, it's. somewhere where you don't know it's a it's uh it's the you should have the body is what it

means i think i did law i don't know 30 years ago and i can't remember even you it's whether you're the right to ask whether your detention is lawful basically the court right the state has to prove that it's actually allowed to lock you up and clearly that's long gone in america i mean no one in guantanamo's ever had that yeah no that's sort of and also didn't we suspend that with all the, that we annexed Australia from our immigration zone. Wasn't that all part of not allowing at least people who are trying to get into the country? No, that's, it doesn't, it's, it's only when you're locked up. No, it's, um, although the 2005, according to Wikipedia, the 2005 Australian Anti-Terrorism Act,

some people have said that it's not constitutional because it limits habeas corpus. So yeah, I wouldn't want to criticise that. What is it got locked up? No, no. I couldn't challenge the detention. Nothing to see here. I think the whole point is, maybe we should rename this podcast. Everything is fine.

Yes. And we'll just go back to talking about parties in Mexico. Yeah, who needs habeas corpus? Yeah. Who needs to prove that, yeah. Yeah. That's, no, everything's fine podcast, I think, is very good. Well, I welcome all these developments.

We are part of the Aconoclass Network. Unless they don't want us to be. Yeah. In which case, it's also completely fine. Tell us, whatever you want, that's fine. Yeah. We wouldn't want to get in trouble, wouldn't be about us.