On Trump running for a third term

Anybody who says Donald Trump definitely won’t (or will) run for a third term is fooling themselves. We simply don’t know how this is going to play out, given that the first nine months of Trump’s second term have been a non-stop exercise in norm-shattering and guardrail demolition.

What we do know is that a number of elected Republicans are already encouraging him to run, including no less of an eminence of erstwhile DC respectability than Lindsey Graham. A few months ago federal appellate judge and former colleague of mine Allison Eid actually argued in a concurrence in a case that the question of whether Trump could run again raised “novel and complex” constitutional questions. And, given modern presidential campaigns, as well as JD Vance’s structurally determined status as the heir apparent, Trump’s decision, or that of whatever Svengali is going to actually make it — here we may wish to consult Stephen Miller’s Book of Fascist Dreams — is probably no more than eighteen months away, or possibly sooner.

One gigantic irony here is that Trump’s presidential ambitions were launched on the basis of birtherism, which was a deranged or mendacious claim that Barack Obama wasn’t constitutionally eligible to be elected president. Teachers of constitutional law have traditionally divided the subject into formally easy questions which, because they are easy, produce no real legal disputes — for example, can someone be elected president twice; is someone born in Hawaii eligible for the presidency? — and questions that can’t be resolved by just reading the text like you might read the McDonald’s menu to learn how many calories are in Quarter Pounder With Cheese.

Trumpism has destroyed that distinction, like it’s destroyed so many other fine legal distinctions, such as what’s the difference between a liberal democracy and a quasi-dictatorship. The moral of this story is that Trump may well run again, and we have no solid basis for determining what John Roberts’s SCOTUS would ultimately do about that, because on the one hand John Roberts’s SCOTUS is obviously dedicated to giving Donald Trump (almost) everything he wants, but on the other hand if they go this far they might as well be mailing themselves a letter bomb in terms of maintaining any shred of legitimacy in the eyes of even the most hopeless centrist prevaricator.

So what I’m saying is that the next three Friedmans will be crucial.