Can Trump seek reelection in 2028?

New York – It has been predicted that former President Donald Trump would return to the White House in January 2025 for a second term.

It was also the first time in well over a century that a former president was elected to the presidency again after serving in that capacity. Grover Cleveland was the last president to be elected to two non-consecutive terms; he held the office from 1885 to 1889 and again from 1893 to 1897.

Cleveland was permitted to run for reelection a third time, but he chose not to do so. However, the U.S. Constitution’s 22nd Amendment, which was passed more than 50 years after Cleveland’s departure, prevents Trump from seeking a third full term.

The amendment states, in part, that “no one shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice, and no one 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.”

There are no accommodations for non-consecutive phrases elsewhere in the amendment’s wording.

In 1947, President Franklin D. Roosevelt was elected to four consecutive terms in office, prompting the introduction of a resolution restricting the terms of U.S. presidents. Other presidents have tried to win third terms, but Franklin, who passed away months into his fourth term, was the only one to be elected more than twice.

Although the 22nd Amendment was enacted in 1951, almost six years after FDR’s passing, it did not apply to Harry Truman, who was president at the time and had won a second full term in the 1948 election.

After serving in office for almost eight years, Truman finally made the decision not to seek reelection. By doing this, he continued an unofficial custom that Thomas Jefferson had strengthened and that George Washington had established.

In March 1952, he declared, “I think honestly and efficiently, and I have served my country for a long time.” “I refuse to accept a reelection. I don’t think it is my obligation to remain in the White House for another four years.

According to the Congressional Research Service, Truman subsequently expressed his support for repealing the 22nd Amendment. In the years after the amendment’s passage, there have also been numerous attempts to repeal it, but none have advanced very far.

Nonetheless, because of language in the 22nd and 12th Amendments that may be taken to imply the possibility, Congress has recognized that a two-term president could still be able to win the presidency again.

According to a summary from the Congressional online database, “Neither Amendment addresses the eligibility of a former two-term President to serve as Speaker of the House or as one of the other officers who could serve as President through the operation of the Succession Act.”