Alarm bells are blaring for Americans across social media after Kentucky’s MAGA Republican Senator Rand Paul just casually suggested a third presidential term for Donald J. Trump.
Trump himself has floated the notion that he could remain in the White House for a third term, in direct violation of the very core of the United States Constitution, on multiple occasions now.
The subject was touched on in the most flippant of manners by the Kentucky Republican lawmaker in connection with his opposition to a bill that was recently put forth by Paul’s Republican Senator colleague, Josh Hawley, that would effectively ban members of US Congress, their spouses, the sitting US president, and the sitting vice president from stock trading while holding office.
Speaking with Fox Business host Stuart Varney, Senator Paul raged against the bill: “I think we’re going to discourage good people, successful people, from holding office. Part of the bill, I do believe, would forbid the president immediately from buying and selling stocks, and it would exempt him from the divestiture part.”
Trump himself has already personally lashed out at Senator Hawley over this stock trading bill, taking to his Truth Social platform, where he labeled the GOP lawmaker as a “second-tier senator” and accused Hawley of targeting him personally with the proposed legislation.
Paul unsurprisingly jumped on the bandwagon, in full agreement that Hawley’s new bill was a direct shot at the president himself.
And that’s when he so casually dropped this terrifying notion: “Future presidents wouldn’t be allowed to own things, so Donald Trump or the next president, which, you know, or some say he might run for a third term. But he would be forced to divest everything. He would have to sell all of his possessions.”
“I think Donald Trump’s got a complicated, probably, financial empire, and a lot of people wouldn’t want to get involved with all of that. You also don’t want to sell it during a downturn. There’s a lot of reasons to discourage successful people, and I frankly think some of the success of Donald Trump being president is he was used to the world of high finance, used to making deals with large amounts of money, and I don’t think we want to discourage people like that from holding office.”
Paul’s flippant remarks about an unconstitutional third Trump term sent Americans into a blaze across social media.
Dartmouth political scientist Brendan Nyhan said, “Chilling to see a senator floating the third term idea.”
Chilling to see a senator floating the third term idea
— Brendan Nyhan (@brendannyhan.bsky.social) July 31, 2025 at 11:30 AM
Gizmodo reporter Matt Novak opined, “I love imagining a world in which Trump illegally takes power for a third term but follows the law in every other respect.”
I love imagining a world in which Trump illegally takes power for a third term but follows the law in every other respect.
[image or embed]— Matt Novak (@paleofuture.bsky.social) July 31, 2025 at 11:30 AM
Bluesky user April Hawthorn shouted, “He’s LITERALLY USING THE OFFICE TO INVENT NEW FORMS OF CURRENCY TO MANAGE HIS WORLDWIDE CORRUPTION,” adding, “Rand is like whispering goodnight to us here. lol”
He’s LITERALLY USING THE OFFICE TO INVENT NEW FORMS OF CURRENCY TO MANAGE HIS WORLDWIDE CORRUPTION
Rand is like whispering goodnight to us here. lol
— April Hawthorne (@feathersonthewind.bsky.social) July 31, 2025 at 11:17 AM
City planner Brent Toderian said, “They’ll be aggressively normalizing with their cult the idea of not just a third term, but a dictator for life like in other countries Trump admires.”
They’ll be aggressively normalizing with their cult the idea of not just a third term, but a dictator for life like in other countries Trump admires.
[image or embed]— Brent Toderian (@brenttoderian.bsky.social) July 31, 2025 at 11:42 AM
University of Wisconsin political scientist Mark Copelovitch said what we’re all thinking when he noted, “Signs you might be a far right authoritarian party (#3191): Casual normalization by a sitting Senator of a ‘third term.'”
While Bluesky user Canadian Cynic offered up what is, in my opinion, the most terrifying theory yet: “If a third term for Trump came before SCOTUS, I’m willing to bet they would find a way to rule that Trump could run for a third term because it’s *consecutive* to his second term, which would necessarily disqualify Barack Obama. That is *exactly* the sort of ruling they would make.”
God help us all…
Featured image via Wikimedia Commons/Gage Skidmore, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license