This past weekend, he seemed to both step back from the idea and reiterate it. “It’s something that, to the best of my knowledge, you’re not allowed to do,” Mr. Trump told NBC News. But then he once again claimed that the decision was his to make. “Well, there are ways of doing it,” he said. All the while, his website continues to sell “Trump 2028” merchandise, including baseball caps for $50 apiece and $36 T-shirts that proclaim, “Rewrite the rules.”
It may be that this talk is mostly a tactical attempt to ward off the stigma of being a lame duck. Congressional Republicans have responded partly by gently disagreeing and partly by downplaying the idea as a joke. “Not without a change in the Constitution,” Senator John Thune, the majority leader, told reporters in March. He added, “I think that you guys keep asking the question, and I think he’s probably having some fun with it, probably messing with you.”
But Mr. Trump’s third-term fantasizing is more dangerous than this response suggests, and it deserves more forceful pushback. He has a history, after all, of using seemingly outlandish speculation to push ideas he genuinely favors — such as overturning an election result — into mainstream discourse. He tests boundaries to see which limits are actually enforced. Even when he backs away from a provocation, he often succeeds in raising doubts about those limits. His behavior is consistent with a president who indeed wants to serve a third term, if not more, and who keeps raising the idea in the hope of getting Americans comfortable with it.
More broadly, Mr. Trump has repeatedly demonstrated his disdain for constitutional checks on a president’s power. He has ignored parts of judges’ rulings, deported immigrants without due process and tried to eliminate the 14th Amendment’s grant of birthright citizenship through an executive order. All of this behavior suggests that he would prefer to wield power without limits.
The appropriate response from the rest of the political system — especially from Republican members of Congress, governors and others — is not to laugh off his musings. It is to assert the clarity of the law: Mr. Trump is barred from serving a third term, period….