They can chose trump as the speaker of the house (who doesn’t need to be a representative) and then get the president and vp to resign, to be removed, or die, and trump becomes acting president for the rest of the term.
Comment on USA President term limits
radix@lemmy.world 5 weeks ago
- if he ran as VP for another person, which is constitutionally allowed, he could be elected as VP
This is an interesting, but untested, legal theory. When Al Gore ran in 2000, there were murmurings of whether he should try to get Bill Clinton on the ticket as VP. Ultimately, there was some consensus that this part of 12th Amendment wasn’t superseded by any others: “But no person constitutionally ineligible to the office of President shall be eligible to that of Vice-President of the United States.”
It’s a bit of an open question whether that means only those parts of the eligibility requirements in place at the time (35 years old, natural born citizen, etc), or whether new requirements are also included, such as already serving two full terms as President. Clinton/Gore didn’t want to push those boundaries, but Trump certainly could try.
IDKWhatUsernametoPutHereLolol@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 weeks ago
kryptonianCodeMonkey@lemmy.world 5 weeks ago
Honestly, I would be very surprised if he were disallowed. Not only because, as you said, it is unclear if the 12th amendment eligibility conditions apply to conditions added after the 12th amendment and make no reference to modifying it. But also because the 22nd amendment does not, in fact, specify that someone who has served two terms is ineligible to be President. Rather it is very specifically a condition about being elected to president. If we’re interpreting the constitution strictly literally, the 22nd amendment doesn’t make a new condition for eligibility to be President, only for being elected president. So the 12th amendment would not apply. That may not have been the intent, but if anyone thinks the same Supreme Court that ruled that the President hadls absolute immunity on the use of his presidential powers isn’t going to let Trump slide right through that loophole… well, you could probably convince them it was raining as you piss on their leg.