History does not repeat itself, but it rhymes. From the Roman Senate to the halls of the American republic, the arc of power is often shaped not by outright force, but by rhetoric—the words that persuade people to accept what once seemed unthinkable. In the long and fraught story of democracy, the demagogue’s greatest weapon has never been policy, but language.
Donald J. Trump, a singular figure in his ability to both command and confound, understands this instinctively. His musings about a third term in office are not serious legal arguments; they are not even constitutional challenges. They are trial balloons of authoritarian ambition—hints, suggestions, whispers meant to erode the very foundation of democratic governance.
There is no ambiguity in the Twenty-Second Amendment. Ratified in 1951 in direct response to Franklin D. Roosevelt’s four-term presidency, it states unequivocally, “No person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice.”
Yet, Trump does not need to win a legal argument. He does not even need to mount a direct challenge. His strategy, instead, is to convince a critical mass of Americans that the law should not apply to him—that it is, at best, negotiable and, at worst, illegitimate.
The method is well-worn. First, claim victimhood—that external forces, whether the “deep state,” the media, or a corrupt establishment, have unfairly burdened him. Second, redefine the terms of the debate—not whether a third term is legal, but whether it is just. Third, plant doubt—not in the law itself, but in the willingness of institutions to enforce it.
He has done this before. When he lost the 2020 election, he did not challenge the result through conventional legal channels; he sought to discredit the system itself. His legal team lost over 60 cases in courts across the country. No substantial evidence of widespread fraud was ever presented. But the failure of these efforts did not matter—what mattered was that millions came to believe that the outcome was suspect.
His third-term rhetoric follows the same playbook. The strategy is not to win in the courts. It is to win in the minds of his supporters.
The Sophistry of Power: The Art of the Deal
The Greeks, those early architects of democracy, had a word for the kind of rhetorical manipulation that now defines Trump’s appeal: sophistry. To the Sophists of Athens, words were not vehicles for truth, but tools of persuasion. A claim did not need to be correct—it only needed to be convincing.
Trump, whether by instinct or design, operates in this tradition. When he suggests that he “deserves” a third term—whether because he was “cheated” out of his rightful victory in 2020 or because he was burdened by investigations and impeachments—he is not making a legal argument. He is making an emotional one.
His logic, if one can call it that, is clear: He is not merely a president; he is the president. His presence in office is not a matter of law, but of destiny. The rules, set forth by the nation’s founders and refined by its institutions, apply only insofar as they accommodate him. When they do not, they must be questioned, dismissed, or ignored altogether.
This is not new. It is the language of those who see power not as a stewardship, but as an inheritance. Napoleon declared himself Emperor of France to stabilize a nation in chaos—so he claimed. Mussolini’s rule, built on a foundation of grievance and imagined betrayal, was justified by the assertion that he alone could restore Italy’s lost greatness. The notion of the indispensable strongman is as old as politics itself.
Illustration by Donny Evans
Trump’s third-term rhetoric follows this well-worn path. It does not matter that his claim is legally impossible. What matters is that his followers believe it should be possible. That belief alone is enough to corrode the very structures meant to guard against tyranny.
The Ploy of Special Pleading: Rules for Thee, But Not for Me
If sophistry is Trump’s means, special pleading is his end. The concept is simple: Rules apply to everyone—except for those who claim they should not.
This, too, is a hallmark of Trump’s public life. Long before he entered politics, he fashioned himself as a man above constraint. Lawsuits against him were dismissed as political persecution. Business failures were recast as strategic maneuvers. Personal misconduct was explained away as irrelevant to his greater cause.
In the White House, this impulse metastasized. When confronted with evidence of wrongdoing, he did not refute the charges; he dismissed them outright. His first impeachment was a “hoax.” His second was a “witch hunt.” The classified documents found at Mar-a-Lago were not mishandled; they were his by right.
His strategy was most evident in the final days of his presidency. Faced with an election loss, he did not concede. Instead, he launched a months-long effort to overturn the results—pressuring state officials, inciting a mob to storm the Capitol, and urging his vice president to violate the Constitution. His efforts failed, but the damage was done.
Now, as he suggests that a third term is not just desirable but also just, he again applies the same formula: the system is unfair. His circumstances are unique. The nation, without him, is lost.
The Republic’s Choice
The founders understood this temptation well. George Washington, pressed by admirers to serve beyond two terms, refused—not because he was required to, but because he recognized that democracy’s survival depended on leaders who placed principle above power. His farewell address was not merely a reflection on his time in office; it was a warning against the dangers of personal ambition.
Franklin D. Roosevelt, faced with a world at war, broke the two-term tradition, but his presidency led directly to the Twenty-Second Amendment—an acknowledgment that even the most capable leaders must not be allowed to define the limits of their own rule.
Trump’s appeal is different. He does not frame a third term as a reluctant necessity, but as a righteous entitlement. He does not argue that he must serve—he argues that he deserves to. The primary question, then, is not whether he will succeed in breaking the constitutional order. It is whether the American people will allow the idea to take root.
History teaches that democracies do not fall in a day. They erode, weakened not by singular acts of defiance but by the slow, steady chipping away of norms. They fall when the people come to see laws not as safeguards, but as obstacles.
There is a moment in every democratic backslide when the citizens of a nation must decide what they will tolerate. In Rome, it was when the Senate granted extraordinary powers to a man who promised to restore order. In Weimar Germany, it was when a people, disillusioned and angry, turned to a leader who told them that the system itself was their enemy.
And in America, it may well be when a president, having sworn to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution, convinces his followers that the republic itself is broken—and that he alone can fix it.
As Lincoln once observed, “if destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher.”
The republic, as ever, is ours to lose.
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