Rep. Andy Ogles (R-TN) has introduced a resolution to modify the 22nd Amendment to allow President Donald Trump to serve a third term.
The Tennessee House Republican announced on Thursday that he was introducing the joint resolution. If such a change were enacted, it would allow Trump to be the first president since Franklin Delano Roosevelt to serve a third term.
Roosevelt remains the only president to have ever served more than two terms.
The proposed change to the 22nd Amendment would allow a president to serve three terms but only two consecutively. Those terms match Trump’s situation after he was elected in 2016 and 2024 for two nonconsecutive terms, allowing him to run again in 2028 if Ogles’s change was ever enacted.
“President Trump’s decisive leadership stands in stark contrast to the chaos, suffering, and economic decline Americans have endured over the past four years,” Ogles said in a statement. “He 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,” he added. “This amendment would allow President Trump to serve three terms, ensuring that we can sustain the bold leadership our nation so desperately needs.”
Ogles’s resolution would require the support of two-thirds of the House and Senate along with three-fourths of the states. The congressman will likely not receive the support needed in Congress given that the 215 Democrats in the House and the 47 Democrat-aligned members in the Senate will likely vote against the bill.
The congressman endorsed Trump’s handling of diversity, equity, and inclusion, immigration, energy, and other issues in the statement.
“It is imperative that we provide President Trump with every resource necessary to correct the disastrous course set by the Biden administration,” he said. “President Trump has shown time and time again that his loyalty lies with the American people and our great nation above all else. He is dedicated to restoring the republic and saving our country, and we, as legislators and as states, must do everything in our power to support him.”
Trump has long speculated that he could run for a third term. In 2020, during his first term in office, Trump told supporters at a rally in Nevada, ‘‘We’re going to win four more years in the White House. And then after that, we’ll negotiate, right? Because we’re probably, based on the way we were treated, we are probably entitled to another four after that.”
The president joked to House Republicans a short time after he won the 2024 election that he could seek a third term. “I suspect I won’t be running again unless you say, ‘He’s so good we’ve got to figure something else out,’” he said.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER
The comment scared Democrats. Rep. Dan Goldman (D-NY) introduced a resolution soon after that clarified that Trump would not be able to seek a third term.
“This is his MO,” Goldman told reporters at the time. “He will drop in something outlandish, claim he’s joking, but then he starts to repeat it more and more, and it starts to become normalized.”
