Good morning, and welcome to our US politics blog amid news that Donald Trump is “not joking” about a possible third term.
The comments on Sunday are the clearest indication yet he is considering ways to breach a constitutional barrier against continuing to lead the country after his second term ends at the beginning of 2029.
“There are methods which you could do it,” Trump said in a telephone interview with NBC News from Mar-a-Lago. And he told host Kristen Welker: “I am not joking.”
He elaborated later to reporters on Air Force One from Florida to Washington that “I have had more people ask me to have a third term, which in a way is a fourth term because the other election, the 2020 election, was totally rigged.” Trump lost that election to Joe Biden.
Still, Trump added: “I don’t want to talk about a third term now because no matter how you look at it, we’ve got a long time to go.”
As Associated Press reports, the 22nd Amendment, added to the Constitution in 1951 after President Franklin D Roosevelt was elected four times in a row, says “no person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice”.
Any attempt to remain in office would be legally suspect and it is unclear how seriously Trump might pursue the idea. The comments nonetheless were an extraordinary reflection of the desire to maintain power by a president who had violated democratic traditions four years ago when he tried to overturn the election he lost to Biden.
We’ll be bringing you more reaction from Trump’s allies and opponents as the day progresses. There are also plenty of other developments:
