There’s one practical, non-trolling reason President Donald Trump has encouraged third-term talk despite the clear language of the 22nd Amendment: he is trying to stave off lame-duck status.
Weeks after Trump finally acknowledged he can’t really run in 2028 under the current constitutional requirements, the first signs of how the new status quo will look are starting to emerge:
A critical mass of Republican lawmakers appears likely to break with Trump on the Jeffrey Epstein files, leading the president to reverse course; Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) is actively seeking a post-Trump identity; the clash with Indiana Republicans over redistricting; and prominent Make America Great Again social media influencers aren’t exactly focused on topics beneficial to the White House or GOP.
This may have more to do with poll numbers and the off-year election results than term limits, but Republicans and Republican-adjacent voices are starting to contemplate life after Trump.
Trump remains a dominant figure in the GOP. His detractors inside the party are weak and marginal. Most prominent Never Trumpers are now functionally Democrats, many of them increasingly left-wing. He still drives the news cycle unlike any other political figure in the country, and there is zero chance he will willingly cede the spotlight anytime soon.
But Trump’s second term has come in stages. In the weeks between his stunning comeback victory and his return to the White House, the Resistance was muted, and he was much more broadly accepted than at any point during his first term. He had won the popular vote for the first time in three tries, and some polls showed a small majority actually approving of him.
Then came the flurry of executive actions, beginning as soon as his Jan. 20 inauguration, which thrilled Trump’s base but angered Democrats. Trump was seen as delivering on his campaign promises at a frenetic pace, even if there were some questions about how durable some of these changes would prove without legislative reinforcement.
All this was soon followed by the elevation of Tesla CEO Elon Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency. This solidified the Democrats’ return to Resistance mode and, on the heels of the executive orders and high-profile deportations, spent down Trump’s political capital. Trump didn’t extend Musk’s DOGE contract; the two fell out shortly after his departure, and, other than rescissions, the whole project has taken on a lower profile post-Musk.
In June, Trump’s decision to strike Iran was the first big move of his second term to divide his base. But Trump supporters were less divided than some prominent MAGA voices predicted. The strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities were seemingly successful and did not metastasize into a wider war. Trump has since had more success in the Middle East, bringing home the surviving Israeli hostages who were still in Hamas captivity two years after the Oct. 7 attack and more or less ending the war in Gaza, than in resolving the Russia-Ukraine conflict. The backlash was small and easily contained.
Trump is now contending with multiple issues that divide his base and encourage would-be successors to chart their own course: H-1B visas, Epstein, multiple threatened military interventions, and the actual drug-boat strikes. None of these has remotely dented his popularity with Republicans or self-described MAGA movement members, though they may hurt Trump’s party at the margins with low-propensity voters. But they have depressed enthusiasm for Trump among allies who were helpful in 2024.
Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) has so far retained more grassroots support than any of Trump’s previous intraparty foes. It is possible this will prove true for Greene as well, though her rift with Trump is still fairly new. Trump-Massie tensions date back to the president’s first term.
The Trump tariffs looked like a crisis averted. The markets had jitters after “Liberation Day,” but eventually settled down. But the tariffs face an uncertain future before the Supreme Court and have been folded into the broader cost-of-living crisis that now threatens Republicans, several years after inflation hit a 41-year high under former President Joe Biden. Democrats were able to campaign successfully on affordability this November.
THE DEMOCRATS’ SHUTDOWN FOR NOTHING
We are less than a year into Trump’s second term, and he has survived many political predicaments that would have done in almost anyone else. While his numbers are down, a 42.6% job approval rating in the RealClearPolitics polling average is higher than that of former Presidents George W. Bush or Barack Obama at a comparable point. It’s above his first-term lows.
The question is how Trump will deal with not having an obvious next act for the first time in his political career and how that affects the incentives of those who plan to stick around once he is gone from the White House, presumably for good.