Alan Dershowitz continues his late-in-life transition from esteemed Harvard Law School scholar to Temu Eli Cash with an upcoming book titled Could President Trump Constitutionally Serve a Third Term? Coming this March! Thrill as the professor emeritus spins out a polemic attempting to muddy the crystal clear waters of interpreting the 22nd Amendment. Could President Trump constitutionally serve a third term? No, of course not. But that’s not going to stop Dershowitz from peddling half-baked hemming and hawing to legions of MAGAheads willing to hand over their disposable income for fascism fanfiction.
And Dershowitz tells the Wall Street Journal that he’s told Donald Trump that the Constitution isn’t clear about this subject, which must have thrilled the guy who cheered on a coup and already started minting Trump 2028 hats. “[Trump] found it interesting as an intellectual issue,” Dershowitz told the Journal describing a conversation with a man intellectually challenged by correctly identifying a giraffe.
It’s not just Trump enthralled by this tinfoil hat constitutionalism. Casino heiress Miriam Adelson announced at the White House Hanukkah party that she’d drop $250 million on a Trump 2028 campaign based on Dershowitz telling her it was legal. The crowd chanted “Four more years!”
“No person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice,” reads the text that Dershowitz is trying to assign the “It’s Complicated” tag. “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 said as though words have no meaning. It is, in fact, clear. Even if the text were not so clear, no one is struggling to understand the original meaning of the provision since the 22nd Amendment was ratified in 1951. People are STILL ALIVE. It’s not a murky interpretive project if it’s written contemporaneously with an episode of I Love Lucy.
There is no mystery: FDR got elected four times and this annoyed Republicans so much they made a rule. It exists to make sure no one gets to be president more than twice. If you can’t figure out the original public meaning of the 22nd Amendment, you shouldn’t be allowed to publish a book about the law. Indeed, if you can’t figure out the original public meaning of the 22nd Amendment, you probably shouldn’t be allowed to operate heavy machinery.
There’s no penumbra to plumb. No Federalist Papers to read through a Cracker Jack decoder ring. There’s a straightforward command that no one in Trump’s position gets to be president again.
Instead, Dershowitz is wasting everyone’s time spitballing loony loopholes like Electoral College members abstaining so that no candidate reaches 270 votes and then throwing the decision to Congress to “select” rather than “elect” the president. Maybe he could be the Speaker of the House and wait for his sock puppets to get elected and promptly resign.
At this point, it would’ve been easier to just let him have that pierogi.
It’s embarrassing, but also a potentially tragic teaser of the 2028 Supreme Court docket. Trump’s cronies on the Court are already trying to “well, maybe” their way into a president-for-life and Dershowitz is there to provide grist for that mill. He’s just doing his part for a cause that needs credentialed lawyers to sanewash anti-democratic nonsense into something that sounds like scholarship instead of a coup hype mix. After spending the last decade as “Guy Who Will Say Any Insane Thing On Television If It Helps Donald Trump,” Dershowitz doesn’t carry the same reputational heft he once did… but maybe it’s enough for this Court.
Either way, Dershowitz can collect his checks and bask in his favorite past time as a cable news talking head laying out increasingly bizarre legal wishcasting. And then he can enjoy his second-favorite pastime: complaining when the Martha’s Vineyard public library doesn’t host his book tour.
Exclusive | Trump Told by Alan Dershowitz Constitutionality of Third Term Is Unclear [Wall Street Journal]
Joe Patrice is a senior editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. Feel free to email any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on Twitter or Bluesky if you’re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news. Joe also serves as a Managing Director at RPN Executive Search.
The post Dershowitz Tells Trump Constitution Is ‘Not Clear’ On Third Term, Continuing Transition From Scholar To MAGA Crank appeared first on Above the Law.