Alarm over Donald Trump’s suggestion he would be willing to serve an unconstitutional third term as president, made during his meeting with House Republicans on Wednesday, has prompted a Democratic lawmaker to seek a formal resolution rejecting the idea.
The president-elect drew laughter from the Republican caucus for his remarks about the possibility of remaining in the White House beyond January 2029, which would be prohibited by the 22nd amendment limiting a commander-in-chief to two four-year terms of office.
“I suspect I won’t be running again unless you say, ‘He’s so good we’ve got to figure something else out’,” said Trump, who incited the deadly January 6 Capitol riot in 2021 to try to cling on to power at the end of his first administration.
On Wednesday Dan Goldman, the New York Democratic congressman, said he plans to file a motion this week specifically mentioning Trump and reiterating the two-term clause from an amendment approved by Congress in 1947, two years after Franklin D Roosevelt’s four-term, 12-year presidency before and during the second world war ended with his death.
A lengthy ratification process was completed in 1951 when 36 of the then 48 states gave their consent to the prohibition of any person who had been elected to the presidency twice from standing again.
Goldman’s motion, according to NBC News, which saw a copy, features language highlighting the amendment “applies to two terms in the aggregate as president of the United States” and reaffirms that it “applies to President-elect Trump”.
The initiative, first reported by the New York Times, is unlikely to receive a scheduled vote in the House, which was projected on Wednesday to remain in Republican hands under the speakership of Mike Johnson, a vocal ally of the 78-year-old president-elect.
But the Democrat could seek to introduce it as a privileged motion, which would guarantee it floor time, a procedural tool previously used to force votes on the ousting of Republican former speaker Kevin McCarthy last year, as well as the expulsion from the House of his fabulist former colleague George Santos.
Goldman, the Times said, is attempting to draw attention to a number of “anti-democratic and authoritarian” comments Trump has made about staying in the White House in defiance of the constitutional amendment.
In July, he repeated an earlier assertion that if he was re-elected in this month’s presidential election “you won’t have to vote any more. It’ll be fixed so good, you’re not going to have to”. Democrats and other critics called the remarks “terrifying” and interpreted them as a statement that there would be no more elections.
In remarks to the National Rifle Association in May, the Times reported, he told his audience: ‘‘I don’t know, are we going to be considered three-term or two-term? Are we three-term or two-term if we win?’’, which was a likely reference to his often-repeated “big lie” that he won the 2020 election.
And two days before the 5 November election, during a dark speech in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, in which he suggested he would be fine with members of the news media being shot, he said he “shouldn’t have left” the White House after his 2020 defeat to Joe Biden.
Despite Republicans having won control of the presidency, both houses of Congress, and the supreme court through Trump’s first-term picks, the incoming president would face an almost insurmountable barrier to modify the term-limit rules and allow him to stand in a fourth consecutive election.
Proposed changes to the constitution require a two-thirds majority in both chambers, plus the approval of three-quarters of the states, either through their legislatures or at a constitutional convention.
The constitution has been amended 27 times since it was ratified in 1788, most recently in 1992 with a measure preventing lawmakers from setting their own salaries.
