The next option is to have Trump become vice presidet (the presidential term limit doesn’t seem to apply to VP), then have the president resign and make Trump president instead, claiming that the 22nd only limits being elected twice…
That might have worked, if not for the 12th Amendment, which has this clause “But no person constitutionally ineligible to the office of President shall be eligible to that of Vice-President of the United States.”
which might be ok with the letter of the law, but only an idiot or a tyrant would interpret it that way.
That may end up being where we run into issues. I have seen no evidence that the majority in the SCOTUS has a problem being either. And since they have lifetime appointments they are under no pressure whatsoever to do a good job. One of the main problems with our constitution.
The third option would be to have the president use the appointment clause, which is very vague about to what exact offices the president can appoint someone. It doesn’t explicitly state that the president can’t appoint someone else to the office of president.
It does actually, the Appointments Clause appears at Article II, Section 2, Clause 2 of the Constitution and states:
“… and [the President] shall nominate, and by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, shall appoint Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, Judges of the supreme Court, and all other Officers of the United States,whose Appointments are not herein otherwise provided for, and which shall be established by Law”
“Herein” in this case refers to the Constitution itself, and it definitely does ‘provide’ for the “appointment” of the President.
I’m not at all surprised that their evil plot revolves around them not understanding the constitution, many Republicans like to pretend they love the constitution when in reality most don’t understand it, and the ones that do think they can simply ignore or change the parts that they don’t like.
Basically Trump only really has 2 options if he wants to remain in power. Have the constitution amended to remove the term limits established by the 22nd (which again isn’t likely) or do something illegal and have the SCOTUS back him up, which is sadly a little more likely.
I almost hope he tries something like that and that there are enough decent people in the Military who would actually uphold their oaths to the constitution to make such a coup impossible to sustain. That might wake people up enough to realize how they came to installing a dictator, and maybe move enough people Left that we can actually do some things to fix our broken system. It would be great if we would get rid of the Republican and Democratic parties and/or at the very least get rid of our atrocious “First past the post” voting system (along with the Electoral College) which is where a lot of the problems in our country can be traced back to.
Better yet I wouldn’t mind if we scrapped the whole “Liberal Democracy” idea altogether and wrote a new Constitution that treats all people as if they are equals and not slaves to the rich and powerful, but I wont hold my breath hoping for that one, we need to educate people first. We have been the victims of hundreds of years of propaganda (which really ramped up in the 20th century), and you can’t reverse that damage overnight.
That might have worked, if not for the 12th Amendment, which has this clause “But no person constitutionally ineligible to the office of President shall be eligible to that of Vice-President of the United States.”
That may end up being where we run into issues. I have seen no evidence that the majority in the SCOTUS has a problem being either. And since they have lifetime appointments they are under no pressure whatsoever to do a good job. One of the main problems with our constitution.
It does actually, the Appointments Clause appears at Article II, Section 2, Clause 2 of the Constitution and states:
“… and [the President] shall nominate, and by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, shall appoint Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, Judges of the supreme Court, and all other Officers of the United States, whose Appointments are not herein otherwise provided for, and which shall be established by Law”
“Herein” in this case refers to the Constitution itself, and it definitely does ‘provide’ for the “appointment” of the President.
I’m not at all surprised that their evil plot revolves around them not understanding the constitution, many Republicans like to pretend they love the constitution when in reality most don’t understand it, and the ones that do think they can simply ignore or change the parts that they don’t like.
Basically Trump only really has 2 options if he wants to remain in power. Have the constitution amended to remove the term limits established by the 22nd (which again isn’t likely) or do something illegal and have the SCOTUS back him up, which is sadly a little more likely.
I almost hope he tries something like that and that there are enough decent people in the Military who would actually uphold their oaths to the constitution to make such a coup impossible to sustain. That might wake people up enough to realize how they came to installing a dictator, and maybe move enough people Left that we can actually do some things to fix our broken system. It would be great if we would get rid of the Republican and Democratic parties and/or at the very least get rid of our atrocious “First past the post” voting system (along with the Electoral College) which is where a lot of the problems in our country can be traced back to.
Better yet I wouldn’t mind if we scrapped the whole “Liberal Democracy” idea altogether and wrote a new Constitution that treats all people as if they are equals and not slaves to the rich and powerful, but I wont hold my breath hoping for that one, we need to educate people first. We have been the victims of hundreds of years of propaganda (which really ramped up in the 20th century), and you can’t reverse that damage overnight.