The US would be “lucky” if Donald Trump remained in office for a constitutionally prohibited third term, the White House has said following revelations that he discussed the possibility with the lawyer and constitutional scholar Alan Dershowitz.
The bold assertion came despite successive polls showing plunging approval ratings for Trump amid widespread discontent over his administration’s economic performance and lingering controversy over his links to the disgraced late financier and pedophile Jeffrey Epstein.
“There has never been an Administration that has accomplished as much in less than one year than the Trump Administration,” White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson told Axios.
“The American people would be lucky to have President Trump in office for even longer.”
Her comments came after Dershowitz, a prominent Trump supporter who acted as his defense lawyer after he was impeached by Congress during his first term, told the Wall Street Journal that he had informed the president that the constitution was unclear on whether he could run again.
That judgment is at odds with the view of most constitutional experts, who say the 22nd amendment unambiguously bars Trump from seeking a third term.
Dershowitz argued a different interpretation when presenting Trump with a copy of his book, entitled Could President Trump Constitutionally Serve a Third Term? – due to be published next year – in a meeting in the Oval Office.
“I said ‘it’s not clear if a president can become a third term president and it’s not clear if it’s permissible,’” Dershowitz told the Journal.
He said Trump “found it interesting as an intellectual issue” and said he planned to read the book.
“Do I think he’s going to run for a third term? No, I don’t think he will run for a third term,” Dershowitz added.
However, Dershowitz’s book lays out potential scenarios in which another Trump term could become a possibility – including having the electors in the electoral college abstaining from casting their votes and instead having the House of Representatives select the president.
The possibility of Trump seeking a third term has been a recurring theme since he returned to the White House for a second time last January.
Trump himself has sent out mixed signals. In October, he told journalists that the constitution was “pretty clear” that he is “not allowed to run”, although he has repeatedly said he would “love” to do so.
Mike Johnson, the speaker of the House of Representatives and one of his key allies on Capitol Hill, has said he “doesn’t see a path” for Trump to run again.
Susie Wiles, the White House chief of staff, dismissed the prospect of a third Trump term in an interview with Vanity Fair published this week. She told the magazine that Trump “knows he can’t run again” but is “having fun” with the idea because he knows it is “driving people crazy”.
At the same time, however, the Trump store has begun selling “Trump 2028” hats to his supporters.
Dershowitz told the Journal that, after meeting Trump, he showed a draft copy of his book to Miriam Adelson, the billionaire businesswoman who gave more than $100m to Trump-supporting political action committees during the 2024 presidential race, and who was visiting the White House for a Hanukah party.
According to him, she responded: “Is this real? Oh, my God, I hope this can happen.”
Later, when Trump brought Adelson on stage during the party, she confirmed she had spoken with Dershowitz. “I said, ‘Alan, I agree with you. So we can do it.’” Her comments were met by chants of “four more years” from the assembled crowd, at which point Adelson told Trump: “Think about it.”
Trump responded by telling the crowd: “She said, ‘think about it and I’ll give you another $250m.’”
