This is a Genuine Crisis

Trump wants a third term and his recent disregard for court rulings show us how he will get one.

by Ben Cohen

Every time I speak to a reasonable Trump voter I ask them whether they believe he will leave in 2028. The response is always the same: of course he will, liberals are just fear mongering.

I follow my question up with an offer: a cash bet on the outcome. I want to see how much they believe in Donald Trump’s allegiance to American democracy and whether they will put their money where their mouth is. There is usually a pause while they consider how much faith they have in the man who tried to overturn the 2020 result and led a violent insurrection on the Capitol.

“You really think he won’t leave?” they finally say, with a notable trace of uncertainty.

Some take the bet and some don’t, but the pause and the uncertainty is revealing. Deep down I believe many of the centrists who voted Trump because they despise woke culture understand the gravity of their decision. Did they really vote to end democracy in America? Won’t the Constitution protect us? It will be ok, won’t it?

The Constitution will not protect us, and no, it won’t be ok.

Trump 2028

If you had any doubts about Trump’s ambitions to stay in office after 2028, consider this: Trump has talked about a third term at least three times since his inauguration. This article was on the front page of the New York Times yesterday:

In the piece Maggie Haberman notes that while Trump’s public “musing” appears to be designed to enrage Democrats, “his suggestion that he could stay in office beyond January 2029 now comes against a very different backdrop.” Haberman continues:

In the first three weeks since his inauguration, Mr. Trump has sought to sweepingly expand executive power and granted the world’s richest man, Elon Musk, seemingly unfettered reach to dismantle federal agencies and to push roughly two million federal workers to consider leaving their posts.

Even when Mr. Trump presents something as a joke, the idea he suggests often becomes socialized by his supporters, both those in office and in the right-wing media. The concept then often takes on more weight, including for Mr. Trump.

Recently, some Republicans have started pushing the idea of changing the Constitution for him.

“People are already talking about changing the 22nd Amendment so he can serve a third term,” Dan Patrick, the lieutenant governor of Texas, posted on X on Jan. 25, a message that Mr. Trump elevated on his own platform, Truth Social. “If this pace and success keep up for 4 years, and there is no reason it won’t, most Americans really won’t want him to leave.”

Lots of Very Serious People have assured us that Trump cannot run for a third term because the Constitution forbids it. Leaving aside the fact that there are loopholes in the Constitution that make a third term possible, these Very Serious People seem to think that Trump respects the Constitution. He doesn’t, and his administration’s recent actions tell us exactly how they will navigate legal constraints they want to disregard.

Laws are now illegal

Here was Politico on JD Vance’s assertion that legal rulings against the President should now be considered illegal:

Over the weekend, Vice President JD Vance delivered a warning shot to the federal judiciary: “Judges aren’t allowed to control the executive branch’s legitimate power,” Vance wrote in a post on X. The post — which landed as several federal courts have issued orders temporarily slowing or stopping the Trump administration’s early executive orders — prompted consternation among President Donald Trump and Vance’s opponents, who read Vance’s post as a thinly veiled suggestion that Trump defy the courts if they move to block his executive orders.

Yet there is no need for interpretive guesswork regarding Vance’s position. In several instances dating back to the start of his Senate campaign in 2022, the vice president has explicitly said that a second-term Trump should defy the courts — even the U.S. Supreme Court — if they stand in the way of him exercising executive authority in ways he deems fit.

This is a very, very important moment in US history and will determine whether the country remains a democracy or turns into a fascist autocracy.

The separation of power

Several clauses in the Constitution establish the judiciary’s authority and the executive's duty to enforce the law (Article III, Section 1 & Section 2, Article VI, Clause 2, and Article II, Section 3). Marbury v. Madison in 1803 established the principle of “judicial review,” meaning the courts have the power to decide whether laws passed by Congress or actions taken by the President align with the Constitution. In other words judges decide what is legal, not the President.

If the President disregards the rulings of a judge, then the President would be in violation of the Constitution.

JD Vance has now laid the groundwork for disregarding legal rulings and has paved the way for a genuine Constitutional crisis. If Trump disregards the rulings (and he will) what are the courts going to do? It is Trump’s Constitutional duty to enforce court rulings but he won’t enforce them against himself. So he will set a brand new precedent that places all legal power in the hands of the Presidency.

What Trump says will be the ultimate law of the land, and with no mechanism left to enforce the Constitution, the 238 year old document will become irrelevant.

Why then would Trump pay any attention to the 22nd Amendment that forbids him from being elected more than twice? He is already telling America that he wants to run again, and we should absolutely take him at his word. Courts, laws, rules, and Constitutions mean nothing to Trump. He is only interested in accumulating and holding onto power, and he will go to any lengths to do so.

Trump is telling you what he will do

Trump was recently asked by Brett Baier whether he thinks JD Vance will be his successor. His answer was highly revealing:

The transcript:

Baier: Do you view Vice President JD Vance as your successor, the Republican nominee in 2028?

Trump: No. But he’s very capable. I think you have a lot of very capable people. So far, I think he’s doing a fantastic job. It’s too early. We’re just starting.

Baier then shifted the conversation to the midterms and the fact that Vance would be seeking an endorsement from Trump. Trump quickly interjected and refused to talk about it:

Trump: A lot of people have said that this has been the greatest opening almost three weeks in the history of the presidency. Definitely been the fastest and the most stuff happening. We've done so much so fast, and we really had to because what they've done to our country is so sad. It's so sad. We're going to be bigger, better, and stronger than ever before.

In other words, I’m not going anywhere.

All of this was entirely predictable. This was precisely why I and so many others begged Americans as loudly as we could to vote for Kamala Harris. We knew exactly what Trump would do if he got in again and predicted that if he did, there was an extremely high chance he would end the rule of law and democracy as we know it.

It is heartbreaking to watch his supporters not carding, or pretending this isn’t happening. It is more heartbreaking to realize there is very little we can now do about it. The time to stop Trump was in November of 2024. Now it is too late.

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