As somebody once said, trying to psychoanalyze Donald Trump is like trying to teach hamsters to sing an aria – it will never work and isn’t worth your time.
Sometimes the random stuff he says is really dumb and doesn’t demand analysis to figure out what he’s “really” saying, because he’s saying nothing. Something about sharks and windmills and electric boats, etc. It’s just words that tumble out of an old man’s mouth.
And sometimes the random stuff he says is bone chilling and portentous for an apocalyptic future where America is no longer a free country. Witness Trump’s bizarre and insane comments on July 26th, made when speaking to a summit of Evangelical Christian voters in Florida.
Immediately, Democratic activists and journalists claimed that Trump was telegraphing his intention to make himself president for life and do away with elections, either in principle or entirely, after he wins. “You won’t have to vote anymore…because we won’t have voting anymore, you’ll just have Trump and the people Trump picks to succeed him.”
Not all news outlets saw it that way, of course, leaning into the “he just says stuff” narrative that so many have been relying on for so long. For them, Trump’s remarks were more in line with “You won’t have to vote anymore…because it will be so perfect that Evangelicals will have everything they want.”
Obviously, what Trump meant here is not clear, and really hinges on the exact meaning of the words “have to.” Did he mean “get to” or “need to?” Given that we’re talking about the idea of a dictatorship vs. a democracy, that seems important…right?
It would for any other candidate. But again, hamsters and arias. Trying to figure out what Trump means is usually impossible, because it’s likely he doesn’t know. In this case, however, there is a very good argument to be made Trump shouldn’t get the benefit of the doubt about these remarks, because he has already made countless references to him being in office longer than two terms.
Over and over, Trump has publicly endorsed the idea of contravening the 22nd Amendment and running for a third term in office. How would that work, legally? Obviously, he doesn’t know or care. It’s just something he talks about. A lot.
In May, he wondered out loud at the NRA conference, “I don’t know, are we going to be considered three term or two term?” if he won again in 2024. Naturally, his enablers laughed it off as masterful trolling of the overly sensitive media. And maybe it is just trolling and trying to wind up the media to get attention – except he’s been making such comments for years, going all the way back to the last weeks of the the 2020 election.
At a Minnesota rally in August, he “joked” that he wouldn’t come back to the state if he lost it to Joe Biden, “Not for term three, four, five or six.” The next day, he declared that “we’ll go for another four years because they spied on my campaign. We should get a redo of four years.” And he said it again a month later, telling Nevada rallygoers that should he win in 2020, he’d “negotiate” another term, which he was “entitled to.”
Trump has also expressed his approval of Chinese dictator Xi Jinping awarding himself that country’s presidency for life, talked of being awarded “extra time” in office, and made numerous other allusions to somehow getting or being given more years as president than he’s legally entitled to.
His supporters have done the same. In just a few examples of the unhinged drive that “small government conservatives” have for making Donald Trump their god king, disgraced televangelist spawn Jerry Falwell, Jr. tweeted in 2019 that “I now support reparations — Trump should have 2 yrs added to his 1st term as pay back for time stolen by this corrupt failed coup,” a statement Trump tweeted his agreement to. Steve Bannon has claimed, probably rightly, that his audience would be fine with Trump serving a third and even fourth term and then passing the baton off to his sons in the kind of American monarchy that people like Steve Bannon used to oppose. And The American Conservative ran an op-ed just this month that Trump should be able to run for a third term if he wins in 2024 because he’s really popular. That’s the argument.
Obviously, all of this is insane and meaningless. Trump still claims he won the 2020 election (except when he agrees that he lost it) so winning in 2024 would be a “third term” under this entirely non-existent umbrella. There is nobody who can give a president “extra time” or a “redo” or with whom he can “negotiate” more time in office. It should also be noted that other two-term presidents have spoken of hypothetical third terms, including Barack Obama in 2016. Trump has also given interviews where he said he wasn’t interested in a third term, which, again, doesn’t matter because he’s not eligible for one.
And yet…he keeps talking about it. Even if it’s “just trolling” or a “joke,” Trump continues to publicly signal that if he were to win again, he would pull some lever that gave him extra time in office. And given how the Supreme Court has gone off the rails over the last few years, we might find out the 22nd Amendment isn’t quite as clear as we’d like it to be.
But even more than those hypotheticals, Trump has already attempted legal maneuvering to award himself an extra term in office. It was January 6th, 2021 – when a cadre of advisors and influencers followed Donald Trump’s lead and organized a coup attempt to nullify and overturn the results of the 2020 election. Just like Trump’s claims that he was “entitled” to “extra years” in office, he claimed he was entitled to take office again despite losing the election – and his enablers did everything they could to come up with a legal and political framework to make it happen. People died, and America had its first ever election without a peaceful transfer of power.
It’s only absurd and insane until it happens.
So whatever Trump meant by “you won’t have to vote again,” it can’t be decontextualized or swept away. It has to be looked at as yet another reference to our electoral system being thrown out or permanently altered to give one man total control over the government. At some point, there just have to be too many remarks about extra years and third terms and redos and negotiations and being president for life to laugh this off. It’s not a joke, and if it’s meant to be one, it’s not funny.
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Mike Rothschild 