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President Donald Trump has been publicly musing about running for a third term — now a new poll shows how he would fare in a hypothetical matchup against fellow two-term president Barack Obama.
In recent weeks, the president has floated the idea of running in 2028, despite the 22nd Amendment barring anyone from serving more than two terms.
Late last month, a reporter pressed Trump on his thoughts on a hypothetical matchup between him and Obama, assuming the 22nd Amendment was revised to allow them to do so. “I’d love that. Boy, I’d love that,” Trump replied.
But a new poll suggests that he might want to consider a different rival. Of 1,100 registered voters polled in the April 2 Overton Insights survey, 53 percent said they would vote for Obama and 47 percent said they would vote for Trump.
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For that contest to happen, the Constitution would need to change. The 22nd Amendment states: “No person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice, and no person who has held the office of President, or acted as President, for more than two years of a term to which some other person was elected President shall be elected to the office of the President more than once.”
Changing the Constitution isn’t easy; it requires a two-thirds majority vote in both the House and Senate and then ratified by three-fourths of state legislatures.
Still, Trump and his allies have said there are “methods” by which he could run again.
“A lot of people want me to do it,” the president recently told NBC, referring to his allies. “But, I mean, I basically tell them we have a long way to go, you know, it’s very early in the administration.”
Pressed on how he would achieve a third term, Trump responded: “There are methods [by] which you could do it.”
Last week, a 2023 remark from Trump’s personal attorney Boris Epshteyn resurfaced. He reportedly told an associate that he “studied the law” and believed Trump could find a way to run for a third term, the Wall Street Journal reported.
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Some allies and opponents aren’t sure whether to take Trump’s flirtations with running in 2028 seriously.
“It’s not really something we’re thinking about, he has four years. There’s a lot of work to do,” White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt recently said. Some Congressional Republicans have insisted the president was joking. House Speaker Mike Johnson said he believes Trump “recognizes the constitutional limitations.”
Tennessee Rep. Andy Ogles took the idea a step further and, in January, proposed to revise the 22nd Amendment, citing Trump as the “only figure in modern history capable of reversing our nation’s decay and restoring America to greatness.”
Sen. Bernie Sanders said he didn’t think Trump was messing around when he made those comments.
“The idea of a third term? Why not? They don’t believe in the rule of law. They don’t believe in the Constitution. So, yeah, I would take that seriously,” he told CBS News.
