US law professor explains three ways Donald Trump could seek third term as president

Donald Trump has previously said he was serious about the possibility of running for a third term as US president.

Under their laws that is not allowed, as since the 1950s, nobody who's served two terms in the White House is eligible to run for a third term, but Trump said he was 'not joking' about bucking the trend.

“A lot of people want me to do it,” he recently told NBC News. "But, I mean, I basically tell them we have a long way to go, you know, it’s very early in the administration."

So could it really happen?

LADbible spoke to law professor and author Danny Karon, who laid out three possible options Trump could pursue in an attempt to run for a third term and the problems he would face with each of them.

Option one: The Vance Presidency

This would be the version of events that NBC recently asked Donald Trump about after he said he was 'not joking' about a third term, with Trump saying 'that's one' way he might do it.

In this scenario, JD Vance would run for president in 2028 with Trump on the ticket as his vice president nominee, only to resign from his role and let the rules on replacing US presidents kick in.

This is somewhat similar to something Vladimir Putin did in 2008 after he'd served two terms, with him taking the deputy role for the next four years, while his sidekick Dmitry Medvedev became Russian president.

In this case they did not swap jobs once elected, though it was believed that Putin was still really the one in charge, at least according to US diplomats (via The Guardian), and he became president once more in 2012.

Karon explained: "They're both elected, then Vance resigns and Trump becomes president, and then he chooses JD Vance to become vice [president]. They just flip roles."

Since he wasn't technically elected president this would get around the ban on running for a third term, but the American lawyer explained that it would come up against another part of the US Constitution.

Trump said that JD Vance running in 2028 and then handing the presidency to him was 'one' way he could do it (Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)

Describing 'a potential problem with this tactic', Karon quoted the 12th Amendment which says 'no person constitutionally ineligible to the office of president, shall be eligible to that vice president of the United States'.

He said: "So you might be thinking if you can't become president because of the 22nd Amendment, how could he become vice president?

“What's interesting to observe is that the 12th Amendment was written long before the 22nd Amendment's two term limit, and probably in context, refers to the minimum age requirement for eligibility, 35 years old citizenship, naturally born citizen.

"Those were the elements necessary for eligibility back then. So maybe we're not talking about the same thing.

“But then, if you go back to the 22nd Amendment, the 22nd Amendment prohibits Trump from being elected president more than once. Yet in the scenario he wouldn't be elected President, he would have been elected Vice President.

“So it goes back and forth between the 12th and 22nd Amendments, and who knows how it would turn out with the Supreme Court."

There's no easy way for Trump to run for a third term (Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)

Option two: Selected, not elected

If putting Trump on the ballot in any way risks running into problems, then what about not putting him there?

While he said being Vance's VP was 'one' method of getting into the White House for a third term, he added 'there are others, too' which he wouldn't elaborate on.

In this second scenario, Trump wouldn't even be the VP nominee, but in a possible election victory whomever gets that job 'quits as VP and Vance picks Trump to be vice president'.

“In this scenario, Trump wouldn't have been elected. He would have been chosen, been selected, not elected, and that doesn't violate the 22nd Amendment," Karon explained.

"So he's not elected to anything, not even Vice President, then Vance quits and Trump becomes [the] president who succeeds Vance, but not through election."

As with the previous option, there would likely be a lot of Supreme Court wrangling over whether this was even allowed, but the law professor warned that things could get very messy, saying: "The problem with going to the Supreme Court these days is what kind of teeth does the Supreme Court really have?"

If Donald Trump tried to get around the rules on a third term then he'd likely face a challenge from the Supreme Court (Win McNamee/Getty Images)

He raised the recent example of the TikTok ban in the US, which the Supreme Court ruled on and supported before Trump reversed the ban with an executive order that delayed it by 75 days.

Karon said: "My point, as it concerns this scenario with the third term, is let's say one switcheroo scenario evolves and it's challenged, and the Supreme Court says, ‘President Trump, you can't do that’.

"He says, like he did to the court as it concerns TikTok, ‘I don't care. I'm doing it anyway. Who's going to stop me? In fact, you're the one who granted immunity’.

"So we don't know how it would go. There's a constitutional crisis when you have the three branches of government fighting with no exit strategy. That's what concerns me.

“This hasn't happened before. I can't remember that when I've ever seen a Supreme Court ruling flatly ignored."

He continued: “There are a lot of legal arguments that could evolve from this interplay between the amendments. If the court said, ‘You know what? Not okay, you don't deserve to be president. You have to leave’, what happens next?

"If he says, ‘I'm not leaving, I didn't shut down TikTok when you said to, I'm not leaving, when you say to, what are you gonna do about it?’"

Trump does not have the votes to simply change the law and let himself run for a third term (Ricky Carioti/The Washington Post via Getty Images)

Option three: You don't have the votes

There is a legal way for a US president to seek a third term despite the constitution saying you can't, and that's to change the constitution.

It's easier said than done, though.

"Trump could seek a change to the US Constitution's ban on the third presidential term," the law professor explained. "Remember, it derives from the Constitution, obviously, the 22nd Amendment to the Constitution.

“I'm going to read a quote here, because I took this down, ‘an amendment may be proposed either by the Congress with a two thirds majority vote in both the House of Representatives and the Senate or by constitutional convention called for by two thirds of the State Legislatures’.

"Thing is, Trump, as a matter of politics, doesn't have the votes to repeal the 22nd Amendment either in Congress or from the States, so that, just as a practical matter, is never going to work."

Back in January, Republican politician Andy Ogles filed a Joint Resolution trying to change the 22nd Amendment, but Karon said that too was 'never gonna work'.

Again, changing the rules is something Putin did as while he was Medvedev's deputy, the term limits were increased from four years to six.

He also changed the rules to effectively 'reset' his own term limits so he could run again.