Trump tries to shrug off opponents' rush to define him as lame duck

WASHINGTON — By continuing to tease a bid for a legally prohibited third term, President Donald Trump could delay what every second-term president resists: becoming a lame duck.

Any president approaching the final two years of their second term eventually becomes that weakest of political birds. Lawmakers, foreign governments, political donors, journalists and potential successors start looking beyond the outgoing occupant of the Oval Office.

Several campaign-focused arms of the Democratic Party in recent weeks have seized on Trump’s inevitable entry into to lame-duck status. The Democratic National Committee pleaded with prospective donors in a recent fundraising email that “time is running out” to “turn Donald Trump into a lame duck.”

Trump himself has shown little interest in becoming a bird of that often-ostracized feather.

Notably, he has kept the 2028 door cracked. Last week, he contended that “everyone” asks him about a 2028 bid but said the laws prohibiting chief executives from serving three terms were “very strong.” But a few days later, his social media account posted an image of him in a “Trump 2028” hat with these words etched on the bottom: “We are going to win.”

Even with the House and Senate away from Washington, D.C., on a summer recess, he has continued to needle GOP leaders over his prized “SAVE America Act,” a Republican-written voter ID and elections overhaul package. And he has remained vocal about and involved in Republican primaries across the country.

Going to (South) Carolina

Trump will headline a rally for Sen. Darline Graham, R-S.C., on Friday night in Myrtle Beach, just days before her primary runoff election against Rep. Ralph Norman. The president has maintained his endorsement of the late Sen. Lindsey Graham’s sister, despite her gaffe during an event alongside Norman this week in which she said, “I’m not that informed on national security,” and Norman’s perfect record of voting with Trump last year.

After yet more primary results this week, Trump took to social media to tout victories by candidates he had backed. While critics snicker at the posts, they serve as a reminder to those Republicans that the head of the party believes they owe him their loyalty in a post-midterms session and in the next Congress.

“He really doesn’t want to become a lame duck,” said Michael Gerhardt, a law professor at the University of North Carolina. “Talking about 2028 is a way to deflect and delay that.

“Because once that happens, he loses complete control of the media, the bully pulpit is less useful and the attention that usually goes to him would go to someone else,” Gerhardt added. “So I think he’s playing both sides against the middle, and it does keep all sides off balance. And that creates leverage for himself.”

Even Norman, who backed former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley over Trump in the 2024 GOP presidential primary, has shown a hesitation to be too critical of the president. In a Tuesday interview with The Associated Press, Norman clearly felt a political need to speak critically of the president’s Iran war — but he walked a tightrope.

“(Trump) did a great job of taking out the nuclear threat that we had for 40 years. ... But there’s still a lot of work to be done. The American people do not understand the Strait of Hormuz not being completely controlled by America,” Norman said. “That’s what I hear. And gas prices, as a result, are staying high. And I think one of the worst things the president wants is the public to turn on him because he’s not ending it.”

During the same interview, however, the fifth-term House member also said of Trump: “I just believe (in) what he’s doing.” But he again returned to Iran in a pretzel-shaped remark: “Now, I don’t like what he’s doing now. But he’s president. I give him all the leeway to do it, if that’s what you want to do.”

Lame talk

Some of Trump’s most flame-throwing surrogates have railed against treating Trump like a lame duck.

“We’ve got to stop yammering about the SAVE America Act. It’s not going to happen. You know why it’s not going to happen? Because John Thune and the donors don’t want it to happen,” former Trump chief strategist Steve Bannon said on the Tuesday edition of his “War Room” podcast, referring to the Senate majority leader.

“They think it’s racist. They think it’s nativist. The (voter) ID, all of it. That’s why they blocked it. That’s why they treat President Trump like a lame duck,” Bannon added before slamming the Senate’s pro forma recess schedule, which prevents solo presidential appointments. “Today in the Senate, they’re going to walk up and hit the gavel, and they’re going to pretend to be in session. So, that President Trump — as they’ve done every day since President Trump’s been in office from the first term, they treat him as a lame duck.”

Speaking of elections

Bannon and some top Trump administration officials have raised Democrats’ concerns with their sometimes bold and sometimes legally questionable claims about coming elections.

For instance, on that Tuesday podcast Bannon said the stalled elections bill “is why we need a national emergency proclamation, a national emergency memo, about the upcoming elections.”

Senior Justice Department officials have also raised eyebrows with elections-related statements.

“So, yes, President Trump, this administration knows and of course understands that states administer elections. And that will always be the case. But it doesn’t mean the federal government should play no role,” Attorney General Todd Blanche told NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday. “And so, the tension there is, of course, whether we should be playing the role that we’re playing.

“Election integrity is something that President Trump ran on,” added Blanche, once a leading personal attorney for Trump. “And the American people elected him.”

Harmeet Dhillon, assistant attorney general for civil rights, told Bloomberg Radio the Justice Department intends to send at least 1,000 election monitors to polling places across the country in November.

UNC’s Gerhardt called talk of a 2028 run or some kind of national emergency declaration “probably empty threats” meant to create “confusion and uncertainty and instability, largely as a distraction.”

Some Democratic lawmakers disagree.

“He doesn’t care about anything. ... This is a man that only cares about himself. And I say, as I look at this, this is something that we have criticized other countries, like Russia, over and over again. And it’s time that that stops. Otherwise, we are going to be like Russia,” New York Rep. Gregory W. Meeks, the ranking Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, told CNN this week. “He is driving this country toward, and would love to have it to be, ruled as an authoritarian state.”