By Palladium
Deeply mortified Americans may soon discover that in voting Donald Trump as president last November, they bought a pig in a poke. They thought they knew him, but they failed to really and cogently inspect the commodity they have now installed in the White House as the 47th president of the United States of America. President Trump utterly lacks circumspection. He was barely two weeks in office when he began to suggest a third term for himself, adjudging that his second term would be insufficient to transform or remake America in line with his dreams. As he put it while addressing the 2025 annual conference of the House of Representatives near Miami, Florida: “I’ve raised a lot of money for the next race that I assume I can’t use for myself, but I’m not 100% sure. Because I don’t know, I think I’m not allowed to run again. Am I allowed to run again?”
It is unlikely that the worst of African leaders could, less than two weeks in office, begin to campaign for an unconstitutional third term. The US Constitution’s 22nd Amendment makes it impossible to get a third term, except the constitution is amended. To amend the constitution, both the House of Representatives and the Senate would first have to pass an amended bill by two-thirds majority. That would mean 290 agreeing to the amendment out of 435 House members, and 67 out of the 100 senators. At the moment, there are only 218 Republican representatives, and 53 Republican senators. But it gets worse. To complete the amendment process, 38 state legislatures will have to approve the change. However, the Republicans have a majority in 28 state legislatures. President Trump, however, appears willing to defy the odds, convinced that since he defied the odds to win a nonconsecutive second term as president, he could reorder the galaxies.
President Trump, it is turning out, in case anyone still doubts, to be much worse than any African president. Still feeling euphoric over his election and inauguration, he assumes that his party would clear the mid-term elections and one way or the other go on to cobble a coalition to do the job of entrenching him as president for a third, or as he joked in November, fourth term. In addition, after failing to learn a thing or two from President Joe Biden’s sudden disintegration, he assumes that he would still be cognitively sound and physiologically agile to run another campaign after four years. Talking about and flying the third term kite is overall a waste of time, perhaps to keep Americans preoccupied with fruitless debates.
What is more remarkable is that no sooner President Trump flew the third term kite than Republican representative Andy Ogles of the State of Tennessee took up the battle cry. President Trump, he said, “has proven himself to be the only figure in modern history capable of reversing our nation’s decay and restoring America to greatness, and he must be given the time necessary to accomplish that goal…To that end, I am proposing an amendment to the Constitution to revise the limitations imposed by the 22nd Amendment on presidential terms. This amendment would allow President Trump to serve three terms, ensuring that we can sustain the bold leadership our nation so desperately needs.” Flattery, it is sadly clear, is not limited to ‘shithole’ countries. It is a human failing, and it is universal. Both President Trump and Representative Ogles ensure the continuing demystification of America. The US may be militarily powerful and economically dominant, but many of their leaders are as ordinary, if not more deplorable, as any third world leader most of whom would never dare this effrontery.
Culled from The Nation
