TRUMP'S THIRD TERM

Donald Trump says he won't rule out running for a third term as president. He knows there's something called the 22nd Amendment that prevents this action, but he says there are ways around it.

And maybe there are, but I would suggest such tricks and work-arounds would only be available to a president who was wildly popular.

And who would be willing to call the man "wildly popular" these days, as Trump's billionaire buddy Elon Musk rampages through government offices with a blood-clogged chainsaw.

Or after yesterday—AKA "Liberation Day"—when Trump announced across-the-board worldwide tariffs (including those levied on several unpopulated island territories), which will likely have the effect of tanking not only the American economy, but that of the world as well.

At closing bell today, Wall Street markets were down five or six percent, just from the news of the initial tariffs. The future will almost certainly bring retaliatory tariffs placed on US goods headed overseas, followed by Trump's counter retaliatory moves beyond that, and so on, tit for tat until the light of the universe sputters and goes out.

Wildly popular? Yeah, good luck with that.

As a result, Trump is stuck with the actual wording of the 22nd Amendment. No tricks allowed. No weird circumventions. No Hail Mary passes aimed at a distant goal line.

He can't run as JD Vance's VP in 2028, then take over after the election when Vance obligingly steps aside (citing some sort of beard emergency, I would imagine), because the person running for VP has to be legally qualified to be president, and Trump would not be.

(Besides, this plan assumes the very unlikely event of Vance getting elected.)

But even if the Vance thing worked, Trump would be cut off halfway through a full term and a new election would have to be called. Probably.

The 22nd Amendment imposes a slightly less than ten-year limit on total presidential terms. In fact, it could be more like six: If you served just one day more than two years of someone else's presidency, you can only be elected president one time on your own hook.

But there's another problem, a problem of Trump's own manufacture:

According to vast volumes of blather emitted from Trump's very blabby mouth-hole, the man was elected president in 2020, after which some Deep-State hocus-pocus ensued and his perfectly legal presidential term got yanked out from under him and bestowed upon Joe Biden, who was—according to Trump—a massively unqualified fellow.

Outrage! Perfidy! Pure, unadulterated stinkiness!

But here's the thing: If Trump was elected in 2020, that would have been the second time for him—and that's the limit, according to the 22nd Amendment: "No person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice."

That means that what we have going on right now, with Elon Musk's metaphorically blood-drenched antics and Donald Trump's hideously destructive Reign of Tariffs, is actually Trump's third term.

(Remember, the Amendment doesn't talk about serving two terms, just getting elected twice.)

Shouldn't Trump be impeached and convicted of violating the 22nd Amendment on Day One? Well, if you believe his Stop-the-Steal rhetoric, I guess the answer would have to be yes.

Either that, or Trump needs to come clean and state clearly for all time that he was absolutely not elected president in 2020.

And if that were to happen, I guess he wouldn't be able to keep praising the thugs who beat up cops at the Capitol on Jan 6. All of a sudden those guys are not heroes and patriots but slow-thinking doofusses who happened to possess brains soft enough to allow Donald Trump to press his lying fingerprints onto their smooth gray surfaces.

Hey, let the screaming begin!