“I feel crazy ’cause I feel like a conspiracy theorist talking about this,” said Alyssa Farah Griffin on Monday’s new episode of The View as the panel started talking about whether or not Donald Trump is actually going to try and figure out how to secure a third term as president.
“You-Know-Who told us he was going to be a dictator on Day 1 and damn if he isn’t a dictator,” Whoopi Goldberg said, referencing all of the political actions he’s successfully taken with little to no pushback already. She also said that she believes the American public “have nothing to say about any of this.” Trump, she argued, is gonna do what he’s gonna do and that’s that.
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“Republicans have pretty much given him free reign up until now. Are they gonna let this happen?” she asked, before emphasizing that the place to push back against anything that’s happening you don’t agree with is at the ballot box at every level of government, starting with next week’s local elections.
But with the 22nd Amendment firmly in place, could Trump even run for a third term? The topic hit the news after former White House strategist Steve Bannon said that one way or another it was going to happen, and Trump didn’t shut down the possibility of running in 2028. So how could he do it?
Griffin said that it needs to be talked about, even though it would be a monumental change, because Bannon is one of those people Americans should be listening to when he says seemingly wild things — because he’s been right before and he has a lot of influence still in this administration.
“So how? “There’s two ways to do it,” Griffin said, before adding, “I think he’s going to go for the third way, which isn’t technically the way you do it.”
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“You would either need a super-majority in Congress to pass a change to the Constitution or you would need two-thirds of states calling for a Constitutional Convention to consider making this change,” she explained, breaking down the two legitimate claims.
So what does she think Trump will do instead? “I sort of think that he’s going to challenge it through the courts on the grounds that it wouldn’t be consecutive terms. And so it would kind of parse the language within the Constitution to say that he actually could do this.”
Is it a strong case? Not necessarily, but he’s had a lot of influence in shaping the courts over the past decade, she argued, so “it’s possible that they could perhaps rule in his favor.”
She also argued that she knows the president well enough to know that he’s not going to go into lame duck status after the 2026 midterms and start passing the baton to J.D. Vance or Marco Rubio. “So it’s something to keep an eye on,” she said. “I find it concerning.”
Others on the panel, including Sunny Hostin and Sara Haines, though, argued that the Constitution is very clear in stating that no president can serve more than two terms, with no mention on if they be consecutive or non-consecutive. It reads quite clearly, “No person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice.”
Hostin noted that Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor told the panel during a recent appearance that the 22nd Amendment “hasn’t been tested,” saying, “And that told me everything that I needed to know.”
“And so, I think, you know, many people who say there’s no way he would do it, those are the same people who said the Supreme Court is never gonna get rid of Roe v Wade. Those are the people who said things like, he’s never gonna have these masked men disappearing people all over the country,” she continued.
“Those are the same people who said, oh my goodness, are you kidding, he’s never gonna get rid of the Rose Garden, he’s never gonna get rid of the East Wing.” She said that watching these things happen has her convinced. “I actually have come to the conclusion that he is most definitely going to try remain in power because remember that East Wing? It took a long time to build that,” she noted. “He’s hooking up the White House because he doesn’t plan on leaving it.”
“I told y’all that years ago that had no plans, he was not going anywhere,” Whoopi agreed. “He said it. He said, ‘I want to be president for life.’ I heard him say it, I watched his lips move and I thought, he means this.”
Ana Navarro argued that it is up to Americans and the media to be pushing the GOP, because Trump is following the playbook of other authoritarian leaders in their rise to power, with parades and ballrooms. “He wants to be an emperor,” she said, adding that every elected Republican should be asked, “Would you be in favor of or against Donald Trump running for a third term? And if they don’t say anything, if they don’t answer, vote them out.”
Haines, though, doesn’t think it matters what they say. “We heard President Trump say when elected he would not pardon the January 6 violent offenders and the first thing — he barely sat down in the seat and he was like, ‘Yeah, get ’em all out,'” she argued. “So I don’t believe anyone regardless of what they say.”
But, she remains confident that the courts can and will stop any attempt at a third term, adding that it is vastly unpopular with the public. “80 percent of Americans oppose this, 80 percent. Only 18 percent support it, which, it’s not a popular move.”
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“And Epstein,” Goldberg chimed in.
“Well, the Epstein thing is forever the umbrella that we run from,” Haines agreed. “We’ve got Epstein, the shutdown, we’re having air traffic controllers that are going into whatever week of not being paid, the holidays are right around the corner. Every person that relies on food stamps can’t eat in a few weeks.”
“All this stuff’s going on,” she argued, is vastly more important than what may or may not happen in 2028. “We’ve got a minute, we don’t need to be talking about it right now,” she said of a possible Trump third term, “but it’s more popular than what’s actually going on on the ground.”
Griffin tried to argue that no matter what avenue Trump pursues, she believes he will still have to run in an election in front of the people, to which Goldberg just smiled, “Well, that’s why I love y’all.”
As she sees it, “If he wants to do it and there’s no opposition, he’s going to do it. There needs to be opposition. People have to make decisions around the country about who they’re voting into office.” That starts at the polls next Tuesday.
