The Unfinished Term: How Trump Claims His Next Presidency
- dkclements
- Nov 1
- 9 min read
By David K. Clements
I WATCHED THE CLIP AGAIN, the one from October 23rd. Steve Bannon, voice steady as a drumbeat, told The Economist: “Trump is going to be president in ’28... people just ought to get accommodated with that... There is a plan.” The MAGA crowd erupted, not with questions but with cheers, because they love the man and love the fight. Across the screen, critics sneered with equal certainty—hatred alone enough to declare it impossible. Both sides spoke as if the Constitution were a footnote.
An old quote popped into my head. It goes, “Bereft of a solution, I had been granted the gift of a problem.”
This problem is the latest I desire to solve, not without reservation. Tonight, I write not as a professor, not as a lawyer, but as a witness. What follows is the anatomy of a possibility: how Trump could return to the Oval Office again, not from conspiracy, but from the slow, deliberate reassertion of the people’s will—or from the quiet activation of plans already in motion. I walk through every path to Trump’s next presidency. I show the mechanics, the obstacles, the failure points. No slogans. No theatrics. Just the gears.
The biblical pattern comes first, because the Republic was built on it.
Humility marked David as a shepherd, so he could become a soft-hearted King.
Faith marked Moses. That self-aware stutterer split the sea.
Integrity marked Joseph, who refused Potiphar’s wife, and Lincoln, who split rails and told the truth.
Courage marked Joshua, who marched around Jericho, and Paul, who faced the Sanhedrin.
Love for the flock marked the shepherd who lays down his life.
Teachability marked Samuel, who slept by the ark, and Timothy, who studied.
Sovereign selection marked Cyrus, who never knew the God who named him.
Trump fits none of these cleanly from outward appearance. He is loud where David was quiet, rich where Moses was exiled. Yet the pattern holds: God uses the unlikely. And God sees the heart. And in the eyes of God, I believe Trump checks off more of these qualities than he is given credit for. The question is not whether Trump is anointed. The question is whether the Republic still recognizes the difference between anointing and ambition.
The Constitution is not marble. It is paper. Ink. Breath. “We the People” is not a flourish. It is a mechanism. Article V offers two paths: Congress or the states. Precedent shows twenty-seven amendments, seventeen since the Bill of Rights. Speed is possible. The Twenty-sixth Amendment, lowering the voting age to eighteen during the Vietnam War when young men were drafted but could not vote, took one hundred days. The document can be changed. It has been changed. The only question is whether the will is there.
And that’s the topic for today:
The Unfinished Term: How Trump Claims His Next Presidency
Before 1951, no president served more than two terms except Franklin Roosevelt. George Washington, the Virginia planter who led the Continental Army to victory at Yorktown in 1781 and presided over the Constitutional Convention in 1787, set the precedent by refusing a third term in 1796, warning in his Farewell Address of the dangers of permanent power. Thomas Jefferson, the author of the Declaration of Independence and third president, codified the two-term tradition in letters and practice. Ulysses S. Grant, the Union general who accepted Lee’s surrender at Appomattox in 1865 and served as eighteenth president, briefly considered a third term in 1876 but was shamed into silence by party elders.
Roosevelt broke the mold with the Great Depression and World War II, winning four terms and dying in office in April 1945. The Twenty-second Amendment was not wisdom. It was panic. The Eightieth Congress, Republican-controlled in 1947, proposed it. The House passed it 285 to 121. The Senate passed it 59 to 23. Ratification came on February 27, 1951. The text is narrow: no person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice. The clause does not bar service beyond ten years through succession. It does not bar non-consecutive terms. It was written to stop another Roosevelt, not to stop the people. But most people agree. You don’t get to be President for more than two elected terms. Let’s walk the path of each argument for Trump being elected in 2028.
The vice-presidential succession gambit begins with Trump running as vice president in 2028 under a proxy such as J.D. Vance, or Marco Rubio. “I'd be allowed to do that,” Trump said aboard Air Force One on October 27, 2025. The proxy wins. The proxy resigns on January 21, 2029. Trump becomes president without election. Lawyers will advise that the Twelfth Amendment blocks it: no person constitutionally ineligible to the office of President shall be eligible to that of Vice-President. It’s right there in black and white. Trump’s two terms would be his undoing. The Supreme Court recoils from chaos. Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Barrett would likely write the majority opinion.
Even Trump himself called it “too cute... the people wouldn't like that. It wouldn't be right.” The closest precedent is John Tyler, the Virginia lawyer and tenth vice president who ascended in 1841 after William Henry Harrison’s sudden death from illness thirty-one days into office—a genuine tragedy, not a maneuver—and Tyler, fully eligible, served the remainder of the term without seeking reelection. The gambit dies before the oath.
The Speaker ascension theory begins with Trump elected just before this term expires, no residency required. This theory was given life when then-Congressman Matt Gaetz nominated Trump for Speaker after Speaker Kevin McCarthy was ousted following a motion to vacate on October 3, 2023. The premise is this. The president and vice president die or resign. Trump becomes president. The Succession Act of 1947 requires that the presidency devolves to the next officer “who shall be eligible to the office of President under the Constitution.” The scholars would cry that a two-term president is not eligible under the 22nd Amendment. Lawsuits flood the D.C. Circuit within hours. Even the new Congress balks at coronating a non-president. The trick dies in committee.
The non-consecutive argument is next. It declares that the 22nd amendment counts only for consecutive terms. The years 2017 to 2021 and 2025 to 2029 equal two. 2028 becomes the third, but non-consecutive. The text is plain: “No person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice.” Notice how the word “consecutive,” or the phrase “two in a row,” are nowhere to be found. Those looking for a loophole or gaps will be disappointed. The Congressional Record from 1947 is explicit. Senator Henry Cabot Lodge Jr. warned that any interruption, any pause, would invite endless cycles. Representative John W. McCormack countered that the amendment must be ironclad, not riddled with exceptions. The House Judiciary Committee report rejected non-consecutive service in a single paragraph: “The limitation is absolute.” The Supreme Court would need only open the statute and the debates to rule nine to zero, Justice Thomas writing the opinion. The argument is laughable and over in one paragraph.
Then there is the stolen term hypothesis: 2020 was taken. The machines, the mail-ins, the midnight counts—every forensic audit I have held in my hands confirms it. Yet captured media, corrupted courts, and a deceived public still cling to the lie. Sixty rulings dismissed the evidence not on merit but on procedure, timing, standing. Congress certified Biden on January 7, 2021, under duress and darkness. Laches was weaponized to protect the theft. 2025 to 2029 is the rightful second term. 2028 would be the third, but not consecutive. This still presents a problem if the Supreme Court declares you get only two terms. Period. And despite that argument, millions remain brainwashed that 2020 was legitimate. Which brings me to the next argument.
The continuity-of-government argument is the one I carry closest. It declares that Executive Order 13848 in 2018 made election interference a national emergency. On April 1, 2020—April Fool’s Day, though no one was laughing—Trump activated Directive 40 in response to seditious actions within the Pentagon. The TV generals—Milley, Austin, and elements of the Joint Chiefs—were not read in. They were, by my analysis, part of the seditious conspiracy that necessitated the activation. The military never fully transferred power to Joe Biden.
2021 to 2025 was an interregnum, a shadow government. Trump never stopped being the 45th, 46th, and 47th President. With hats and merchandise emblazed with “45-47,” the dash suggesting a pause, skipping Biden entirely—2025 to 2029 is the continuation of his first term. The obstacle is brutal: Article II, Section 1, says the president shall hold office during the term of four years. Biden took the oath. Trump did not, at least not publicly.
An extended single term, 2017 until continuity-of-government is restored to Trump, in theory, does the trick. But this begs the question. What signals the end of Trump's first term? Military tribunals and the draining of the swamp of the treasonous lot? Seditious conspirators shot by firing squad? The problem this theory presents is that it would necessarily call into question whether 2024 was legitimate. Whether it counts.
Because if it does, you run right back to “the-two-terms-only” problem. Still, I think this is the best theory that Trump has not enjoyed two terms. But regardless of my enthusiasm for this theory, it's too mind-numbingly incredible for most of America to wrap their heads around. And that is the strongest argument against it.
The repeal of the 22nd Amendment is the only path with teeth in the open. It requires two-thirds of the House, 290 votes. It requires two-thirds of the Senate, 67 votes. It requires three-fourths of the states, 38. Timeline ranges from one hundred to one hundred eighty days. The filibuster blocks it even with 62 Republican senators. If even eight defect, the repeal dies. California, New York, Illinois never ratify.
The path requires a miracle.
A miracle that would need to be paired with a safeguard: the Twenty-eighth Amendment, passed in the same breath, grants a single, one-time third term to the once-in-a-lifetime president who reclaimed our stolen Republic from the abyss. After him, the old ways return—no constitutional limit, only the pre-FDR tradition upheld by secure elections. Tyrants cannot cling to power when the ballot is honest and the count is clean. The people, not parchment, become the final term limit.
I believe in a God that can make all things possible. But for the miracle to work, we must seek His glory, not the tool of His divine appointment.
Second. This path only works in the daylight. I have seen the data. I have held the ballots. I know the mechanics. I call it Operation Clean Slate.
It’s the rollout of a massive declassification of 2020 and 2024's fraud that reaches the brainwashed in unrelenting fashion. Nation state experts from the inside of the NSA provide unassailable proof. Dominion and Smartmatic executives turned whistleblowers sing about their corruption to avoid the death penalty. Cyber findings reveal where the 6.3 million votes went missing for Kamala Harris, and why she could not match Joe Biden's ridiculous 81 million vote total that no rational human being could believe. All that's required is an emergency broadcast that we can't turn our eyes from. Back to Operation Clean Slate.
Within the next few months, Trump issues the mother of all election integrity executive orders—rooted squarely in his plenary authority as commander-in-chief—mandating hand-marked paper ballots, in-person voting on the first Tuesday after the first Monday, voter ID with signature match, no mail-in except for military and overseas, and hand counts in public view. The National Guard stands ready to secure the primaries and general election.
After the clean 2026 midterms deliver an overwhelming mandate, the Clean Slate Act is introduced and passed in 2027: House 318 to 117, Senate 69 to 31, signed into permanent law on June 30.
The purge comes in November 2026. Turnout reaches eighty-seven percent, the highest since 1876. The House flips to 335 to 100 Republican. The Senate flips to 67 to 33 Republican. Governorships reach 38 Republican. New blood enters: Kari Lake, restored to an office of her choosing after both her governor’s and Senate races were stolen; Sam Brown, the Nevada veteran; and many J6ers who suffered unjustly, including John Strand and Jeremy Brown, who ran for office from jail.
The repeal begins in January 2027 with House Joint Resolution 1: the Twenty-second Amendment is repealed. States ratify in waves. Texas, Florida, Georgia on day one. Pennsylvania, Arizona, Wisconsin in week two. North Carolina, Nevada in week four. Minnesota becomes the thirty-eighth on June 15.
The Twenty-eighth Amendment is ratified. 2028 arrives. Trump runs unopposed in the primary. Gavin Newsom, the California governor, runs for the Democrats if he's not in jail. Trump wins 520 electoral votes and seventy percent of the popular vote. “I would love to do it,” he said of a third term—or fourth, or unfinished first. “I have my best numbers ever.”
The Republic does not end. It breathes. The chain is gone. The people spoke. Yet humility, faith, integrity, courage, love, teachability, and sovereign selection remain the pattern. We the People can express our desire for Trump to serve again—whether as a third term, a fourth, or the completion of an unfinished first—but we must ask God what He wants. Any scheme will fall apart without His providential blessing. Saul was anointed, then rejected, because he forgot the pattern. A pathway cleared for Trump can be exploited by those who do not love the Lord. Honest elections are the surest term limit. Tyrants are given the boot not by amendment, but by ballot.
One day Trump won't be here. His energy defies his age. The surest way to secure a lasting and generational victory is to set the stage for more of "the unlikely" to emerge. Those anointed and appointed by God. Those that understand the most valuable thing on Earth is Jesus Christ, and that the government will be on His shoulders.
David K. Clements is a seasoned attorney, former law professor, filmmaker and dedicated advocate for election integrity and constitutional rights. If you think he's on to something, consider being a monthly sponsor of his independent journalism at:
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