Listening to President Donald Trump is often an exercise in gauging whether he’s serious or not.
Is he serious about tariffs that could drive the US economy into recession? We’ll find out more this week.
Is he serious about protecting Social Security and Medicare? It could depend on your definition of “waste, fraud and abuse.”
There is little question, however, that Trump is “not joking,” as he told NBC News in a phone interview Sunday, when he talks about running for a third term.
That’s despite how fantastical it seems that a president could ignore the 22nd Amendment and all the hurdles to changing the Constitution’s two-term limit.
“There are methods,” Trump said, to run for a third term, but he did not elaborate.
He has talked about a third term repeatedly, but never before has he sounded this serious.
“We have almost four years to go and that’s a long time, but despite that, so many people are saying ‘You’ve got to run again,’” he told reporters on Air Force One on Sunday. “They love the job we’re doing.”
Socializing ‘the unthinkable’
While running for a third term is clearly unconstitutional, if there’s anything Trump has shown us, it’s that he can normalize things that don’t seem possible.
After the January 6 Capitol riot, Trump was treated as a pariah by Republican lawmakers. Now he is at the height of his power.
“Don’t underestimate Donald Trump’s willingness not only to socialize the unthinkable in American politics, but actually to act on it,” said Susan Glasser, the New Yorker writer and author of a new book documenting Russian President Vladimir Putin’s rise,
