Donald Trump recently told NBC News’s Kristen Welker that is “not joking” about seeking a third term, followed by this exchange:

NBC News asked about a possible scenario in which Vice President JD Vance would run for office and then pass the role to Trump. Trump responded that “that’s one” method.

“But there are others too,” Trump added.

Asked to share another method, Trump simply responded “no.”

Now, for the media to be feeding factual scenarios to Trump seems, well, not the wisest move. But more to the point, such a method is constitutionally suspect, in my view, apart from its outlandish factual nature (e.g., someone willingly giving up the office of the presidency for… an 82-year-old to get back in the saddle).

As I told the Associated Press:

Derek Muller, a professor of election law at Notre Dame, noted that the 12th Amendment, which was ratified in 1804, says “no person constitutionally ineligible to the office of President shall be eligible to that of Vice-President of the United States.”

Muller said that indicates that if Trump is not eligible to run for president again because of the 22nd Amendment, he is not eligible to run for vice president, either.

“I don’t think there’s any ‘one weird trick’ to getting around presidential term limits,” Muller said.

In addition, pursuing a third term would require extraordinary acquiescence by federal and state officials, not to mention the courts and voters themselves.

He suggested that Trump is talking about a third term for political reasons to “show as much strength as possible.”

Now, there’s no question there is potential constitutional ambiguity here, as Professor Brian Kalt has discussed. But scholars like Professor Michael Dorf a quarter century ago were bolstering the idea of a Gore-Clinton ticket in 2000:

Thus, if Clinton were to be elected Vice President, and ascend to the Presidency based on, for example, Mr. Gore’s resignation, then nothing unconstitutional would have occurred. Clinton would have been elected to the Presidency only twice — though he would serve as President thrice. Under the Twenty-Second Amendment, that is perfectly permissible.

. . . But in seeking the Vice-Presidency — a job, in John Nance Garner’s unforgettable phrase, “not worth a bucket of warm spit” — Clinton would hardly be bidding for dictatorial powers.

Similar claims were made by Professor Brian Gray and elsewhere. But in my earlier scholarship, I found this interpretation weaker than the one advanced by Matthew Franck:

It follows from the 22nd Amendment that Bill Clinton, being “constitutionally ineligible” to be elected president, is ineligible to become president by another route.  He is, in short, ineligible to be president, and therefore ineligible to become vice president under the 12th amendment.

I agree. But it’s worth noting that if–and I think it’s still a big if–such a gambit arose, there are tremendous complexities in its implementation. Not the least of which is the fact that after Trump v. Anderson, I believe the Court expressly left open the opportunity for states to review qualifications of presidential (and vice-presidential) candidates outside of the 14th Amendment and exclude candidates on that basis. Vice presidential nominations and ballot access deadlines for them occur in late summer, giving an exceedingly truncated window for review–and, frankly, one that may leave a major party without a vice presidential candidate on the ballot in several states with the approval of the United States Supreme Court. (Setting aside, of course, the will power of someone like J.D. Vance relinquishing the presidency.)

There are lots of scenarios that have been running over the last couple of months, not worth rehashing here. My belief–and perhaps I’ll be proven wrong–is that such bluster is bluster to give the illusion of strength of a lame-duck president. There’s no question that since the 22d Amendment, second-term presidents–think Nixon and Watergate, Reagan and Iran-Contra, Clinton and Lewinsky, Bush and Iraq–have found the later days of their administration mired in scandals or congressional oversight. The next presidential candidates in Congress are licking their chops at the opportunity for taking the nomination.

There remains to be seen, of course, what is bluster and what turns into reality. But even in reality, there are major legal and practical hurdles to such gambits. And it is worth spending the time to think about those hurdles, rather than “suggesting” them to the president as entirely reasonable and viable possibilities in an interview.