The NPR Politics Podcast - Trump & Presidential Term Limits

Episode Date: April 1, 2025

The president has flirted with — and walked back — suggestions he would seek a third term in office, which runs counter to the 22nd Amendment's provisions on term limits. But that's not stopping supporters & academics from exploring ways the amendment's language may be interpreted differently. This episode: White House correspondent Deepa Shivaram, voting correspondent Hansi Lo Wang, and senior political editor & correspondent Domenico Montanaro.The podcast is produced by Bria Suggs & Kelli Wessinger and edited by Casey Morell. Our executive producer is Muthoni Muturi.Listen to every episode of the NPR Politics Podcast sponsor-free, unlock access to bonus episodes with more from the NPR Politics team, and support public media when you sign up for The NPR Politics Podcast+ at plus.npr.org/politics.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Imagine, if you will, a show from NPR that's not like NPR, a show that focuses not on the important but the stupid, which features stories about people smuggling animals in their pants and competent criminals in ridiculous science studies, and call it Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me because the good names were taken. Listen to NPR's Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me. Yes, that is what it is called wherever you get your podcasts. It is called Wherever You Get Your Podcast. Brad Kupfer, MD Hi, this is Brad from Elba, New York. I'm currently boiling 350 gallons of maple sap to make about seven gallons of pure New

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That is cool. I'll have to do an NPR Politics Plus segment on the time I thought I was almost gonna get killed trying to get Vermont maple syrup in Vermont. So that's another story. That was so many words that I was signing up for that plus episode. I have a lot of follow up questions. It was nuts. Interesting. Hey there, it's the NPR politics podcast. I'm Deepa Shivram. I cover the White House. I'm Hansi LeWong. I cover voting.

And I'm Domenico Montanaro, senior political editor and correspondent. And today on the show, we're looking at comments made recently by President Trump about the possibility of getting a third term in office. This came up in an interview with NBC News over the weekend where Trump told Meet the Press moderator Kristen Welker over the phone that, quote, a lot of people want me to do it and that he wasn't joking about it. He said, quote, there are methods which you could do it. Yesterday in the Oval Office, though,

he seemed to walk that idea back a little bit. People are asking me to run, and there's a whole story about running for third term. 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. I wanna do a fantastic job. We have four years, just about, almost close to four years. Time is flying, but it's still close to four years. And we're getting a lot of credit for having

done a great job in the first almost 100 days. Obviously, a lot to get into here. But, Hansi, let's start with the basics. Very, very zoom out here. What does the U.S. Constitution say about presidential term limits? So the first sentence of section one of the 22nd Amendment says, quote, no person shall be elected to the office of the president more than twice. And this comes after a two term norm that was set by former President George Washington, the very first US president. But this amendment's language was ratified in 1951 because former President Franklin

Roosevelt served third and fourth terms during World War II and those were controversial. Right. And those were controversial. Exactly. And so, you know, things had changed and there was a two-term limit. But then what is Trump talking about when he's saying that there are methods to change that? Well, he confirms NBC News he's talking about at least one method that was based on the

fact that winning an election is not the only way a person can become president of the United States. For example, a former two-term president serving as president of the United States. For example, a former two-term president serving as speaker of the House of Representatives could become president through the Presidential Secession Act of 1947. And a twice-elected president could become vice president and then return as the next president if, follow me here, the current president were to be removed from office, resign or die.

And, you know, there's this last sentence of the 12th Amendment we should also keep in mind. Somebody like to talk to you say, you know, this could be a roadblock for any twice-elected president attempting to get back into the White House to the vice president position. And that sentence says that, quote, no person constitutionally ineligible to the office of president shall be eligible to that of vice president of the United States. But in court, there could be an argument that the only eligibility requirements in the Constitution are spelled out in the original text, not the amendments. And that original text says you just have to be a national born citizen at least 35 years old and a resident within the United States for at least 14 years. So you could argue Trump is not ineligible based on that even after winning two presidential elections. Yeah there are a lot of contortions that you know Trump

and the people supporting him have to go through to be able to get him to you know potentially be at some kind of third term. In addition to this idea of potentially either running on the vice presidential line, which he may or may not be qualified to actually do, there's also this theory that's been floated by some Republicans that he could be elected speaker of the house. Because remember, you don't have to be a member of Congress to be speaker of the house. Then the president and vice president could resign and then since he'd be second in line, he could ascend to the presidency. But that's a lot going on there, frankly, and it's not something that is seen as very

much a likelihood at all. But we have to take Trump literally and seriously, given that he's putting a lot of this out there. The more straightforward way, as Hansi is sort of alluding to is going through the courts and saying the 22nd Amendment is just not constitutional, and then they strip it and he can serve as long as he wants. SONIA DARA-MARGOLIS So when he says methods, there are actually a lot of pads here that could potentially, heavy emphasis on the potentially work. But I want to get into like one element of this conversation or even the fact that this came up because it's done in a very Trump way, which is that he didn't exactly say this,

you know, pretty crazy thing to be clear. We haven't had a president serve more than two terms since Roosevelt like Hansi mentioned. But to say it in a way that's just like, oh, you know, people are saying I should, but he doesn't get into the details. But he says there are methods. This is something he does pretty often with a lot of his ideas. Yeah, definitely. And I think there's a lot of politics, obviously, at play with some of this. I mean, if you think about what happened last week with the Signal chat group controversy, this is one way to distract from bad news. We have the tariffs, trade war sort of going into full effect tomorrow, supposedly. So that's something that could raise car prices, for example, and grocery prices. So Trump would much rather not have that conversation, have people in the media sort of scrambling to think

and talk about some other big distraction that maybe he will or won't follow through on. And I think at the end of the day, also, if Trump acknowledges that he's unable to run in 2028 and doesn't play with this idea, then after the midterms next year, he's essentially a lame duck. And I don't think Donald Trump wants to be seen as somebody who's irrelevant as president. No, this is a person who is very good at captivating the limelight and turning attention to himself and staying relevant, especially when there are, to your point, Domenico, so many other things going on to kind of flood the zone

and make this the topic of conversation on this fine Tuesday on April 1st is, you know, very in Trump's wheelhouse. And we should say this podcast is not a April Fool's joke. Absolutely. All right, we're going to take a quick break and we'll be back in a moment. These days there is a lot of news. It can be hard to keep up with what it means for you, your family, and your community. Consider This from NPR is a podcast that helps you make sense of the news. Six days a week, we bring you a deep dive on a story and provide

the context, backstory, and analysis you need to understand our rapidly changing world. Listen to the Consider This Podcast from NPR. On the Embedded Podcast. No, no. It's called Denying a Sweetness of Speech. It's misinformation. Like so many Americans, my dad has gotten swept up in conspiracy theories. These are not conspiracy theories. These are reality.

I spent the year following him down the rabbit hole trying to get him back. Listen to alternate realities on the embedded podcast from NPR, all episodes available now. This is Tonya Mosley, co-host of Fresh Air. You'll see your favorite actors, directors, and comedians on late-night TV shows or YouTube, But what you get with Fresh Air is a deep dive. Spend some quality time with people like Billie Eilish, Questlove, Ariana Grande, Stephen Colbert, and so many more. We ask questions you won't hear asked anywhere else. Listen to the Fresh Air podcast from NPR and WHYY. And we're back. Domenico, I want to talk about this whole topic from a political standpoint. We kind of got into it a little bit, but I mean, Trump has widespread support among Republicans,

but he's never had an approval rating above 50 percent. And the idea that he's flirting with a potential third term here, even just in terms of his political agenda, what is to be gained from floating this idea? Well, you know, we mentioned the idea that, you know, he could not be seen as a lame duck. Well, if, you know, after the 2026 midterms, depending on what happens, you know, if Democrats take back the House or even if Republicans stay with a narrow majority, Trump's going to want to be able to get other stuff done, right? So they don't want to have to have people looking toward 2028 and whoever the person might be who leads the Republican Party or who the person in the Democratic Party is

going to be criticizing Trump. Maybe we start to think and talk more about that presidential election because we know that sometime late 2026, 2027, we're going to hear about what who's going to be running in that presidential election. Remember, Donald Trump announced that he was running for 2024 presidential election just a week after the 2022 midterms. I wonder if there's an argument to be made here also that, you know, by Trump trying to, you know, sort of float this idea of like, you think I'm, you know, going to be done

in 2028? Well, you know, I'm just going to keep coming back. It really kind of puts Democrats further on edge, right? Because this is already a party that is struggling to sort of like find their footing in this second Trump term. And then to like have this opportunity in 2028 to run in a non-Trump race is really different than running in a race where Trump is saying, well, I could be back again. In a land of nightmares for Democrats these last couple of months, this is like the biggest

nightmare that they could possibly have, right? I mean, the idea that Trump could potentially come back and not go away, not have the sort of light at the end of the tunnel of 2028, you know, is another one of these sort of own the libs moment for the right. So whether Trump does it or not, they've created a degree of anxiety among Democrats, among the left, that's, you know, going to set their hair on fire and already is. And that's something they kind of smirk at and think is kind of hilarious on the right. We've seen Trump and

Republicans do this plenty of times before, including when Trump was out of office. And you know, we saw these kind of gifs online showing Trump president in the year 90,000. Trump forever was one of the phrases within it because they knew that that would get to people on the left and would really set them off. And at the same time, like really drums up the Republican base. Hansi, I want to come back to you because I know you've you've talked to a lot of experts here and people you've talked to about this, you know, possibility that Trump is floating. They have suggested that there's maybe a window here for the country to respond on whether

they even want Trump to run again, right, By either, you know, being explicit in saying that this is something that is a good thing or disavowing it. What have people been telling you? Yeah, one of the people I talked to is Bruce Peabody. He's a professor at Fairleigh Dickinson University. He wrote about this potential scenario of a former twice elected president trying to become president again through the vice presidency in a law review article back in 1999. So he's been thinking about this for a while and he pointed out, you know, the timing of Trump's latest comments here, you know, we are more than three years away from the 2028 election.

And if there's enough support for one, there's still technically time to try to pass a new constitutional amendment that definitively blocks a potential third Trump term. You know, he told me right now essentially the nation is on notice and it has the power to act through a new constitutional amendment. And of course, to be clear, that requires support from three-fourths of the state, 38 of the 50 states. And so far, there has been no joint resolution introduced in this Congress to propose such an amendment.

There is a proposal by Republican Representative Andy Ogles of Tennessee. He wants to change the Constitution so that a person could be elected president three times if they had not been previously elected to two consecutive terms. So that would allow Trump but not former President Barack Obama, for example, to run again. That's very interesting. And I'm curious, Hansi, also, like, you know, I know we don't have a crystal ball here, but like how are the regular folk kind of responding to this? Have we seen any indication of like what voters really think about literally changing the Constitution and changing the rules here in order for this to be a potential option?

The common understanding of the 22nd Amendment is that a person cannot serve more than two times as president. But, you know, look at the actual language here, it's elected, it's not served. And so that raises a lot of questions. And there's also a lot of skepticism from folks, you know, feeling that this is another way for Trump to talk about this as a way to distract from more substantial issues. But, you know, the legal experts I talked to say, you know, you also can't rule out the possibility here that Trump tries to run for a third term regardless of what the 22nd Amendment says. We've already seen this administration challenge constitutional provisions and we're at a moment where the ability of the federal courts and Congress to serve as checks and balances to the White House is under question.

And you know, legal scholars I talked to say courts may be reluctant to weigh in on this if question. And you know, legal scholars I talked to say, courts may be reluctant to weigh in on this if this becomes, you know, from a potential scenario to a real life scenario of Trump trying to run for a third term in some way. And we should say, you know, this is not exactly a plan that's operational when it comes to Trump and his team. It just seems like something at this point that they're using to distract and get people talking.

And it's certainly having that effect. By the way, Trump is not the only president to have ever talked about this. Plenty of past presidents have talked about and flirted with the idea of getting rid of the 22nd Amendment or wishing that they could. You know, Barack Obama said he'd be confident that he could win again. Ronald Reagan even toyed with the idea of trying to push to get rid of it. And Bill Clinton thought about non-consecutive terms. But at this point, it is the 22nd Amendment.

We have no evidence that there's any kind of operational plan that Trump is gonna actually try to do this. All right, we're gonna leave it there for today. I'm Tifa Shibaram, I cover the White House. I'm Hunzi Luong, I cover voting. And I'm Domenico Montanaro, senior political editor and correspondent.

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