At a rally Tuesday in Colorado, Donald Trump announced that he supports congressional term limits, even though he opposed them less than a decade ago.
“Decades of failure in Washington and decades of special interest dealing must and will come to an end,” Trump proclaimed at his campaign event in Grand Junction, even creating the new hashtag #DrainTheSwamp in the process. While Trump characterized unlimited terms as an invitation for corruption and incompetence, though, he once argued for the exact opposite position. According to a 2008 video unearthed by American Bridge 21st Century, a pro-Clinton SuperPAC, Trump defended New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s run for a third term.
“Well, I’m not a believer in term limits,” Trump said at the time. “If you don’t like someone, you push a button.” He later added, “I don’t know why it’s popular. I think it’s people who really press it who want to run for office and the only way they’ll get elected is, I guess, to term limit people out because they can’t win an election.”
Donald Trump’s platform is wishful thinking from a crazy man who is claiming that more and more things are rigged against him. He can’t control congressional terms, which can only be changed by a constitutional amendment. In short, Trump may have more luck pushing out members of Congress from the barrel of a gun than with term limits
Trump’s position on congressional term limits also raises troubling questions about the amount of power he wishes to amass as president. Because entrenched congressional leaders would almost certainly pose a major threat to his agenda if he is elected, forcing them out of office would be an efficient way of consolidating his rule. In the past, Trump has implied expanding presidential powers to an unprecedented degree (), from his bold declarations on scrapping trade deals to his infamous plan for building a wall on the U.S.-Mexican border. His term limit proposal can now be added to the list of Trump policies that would be hard to implement without radically altering the nature of the presidential office.
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