US Presidents Are Limited To Two Terms - Consecutive or Non-Consecutive

With President Trump having left the White House, there are whispers that he is already talking about running for President again in 2024.

If he does so and wins, President Trump would become only the second person to have ever served two non-consecutive terms in the White House, with Grover Cleveland being the other.

The question is - how many more terms would President Trump be allowed to serve in the White House?

Would he be eligible for just one more term, or would he be allowed to serve for two more terms?

-

The answer to this question is found in the 22nd Amendment of the Constitution of the United States.

Here is what the 22nd Amendment says:

"No person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice, and no person who has held the office of President, or acted as President, for more than two years of a term to which some other person was elected President shall be elected to the office of the President more than once".

So, in the case of President Trump, he would only be eligible to serve in the White House for one more term, as he would have been elected to the Office twice at that point.

-

The 22nd Amendment was approved by Congress in March of 1947, and eventually ratified by the states in 1951.

The 22nd Amendment was introduced as a result of Franklin D. Roosevelt winning four terms in the White House, which gave rise to the fear of an unlimited number of terms in office. Prior to FDR, the Presidents had maintained an informal tradition of limiting their time in office to just two terms.

The 22nd Amendment made this "informal arrangement" a formal one.

There was talk of President Trump potentially serving more than two terms in office (though he maintained that he was joking about it), though this would involve making an amendment to the Constitution, which is extremely difficult to do.

Filed under: General Knowledge