WASHINGTON, April 1, (AP): US President Donald Trump has just started his second term, his last one permitted under the U.S. Constitution. But he's already started talking about serving a third one. "There are methods which you can do it,” Trump insisted to NBC News in a telephone interview on Sunday. That follows months of Trump making quips about a third term, despite the clear constitutional prohibition on it.

"Am I allowed to run again?” Trump joked during a House Republican retreat in Florida in January. Just a week after he won election last fall, Trump suggested in a meeting with House Republicans that he might want to stick around after his second term was over. This time, Trump said Sunday, "I'm not joking.” But even some allies don't believe that. "You guys keep asking the question,” Senate Majority Leader John Thune told reporters Monday.

And Trump is just "having some fun with it,” he said, "probably messing with you.” Trump's musings often spark alarm among his critics even when they're legally impossible, given that he unsuccessfully tried to overturn his 2020 election loss and has since pardoned supporters who violently attacked the US Capitol on Jan 6, 2021. But Trump, who will be 82 when his term ends, has also repeatedly said that this will be his last term.

Trying for another also would flatly violate the Constitution. The current gambit seems more like a termed-out president trying to convince his party and the public that he could still be in power four years from now. Here are some questions and answers related to Trump's occasional comments about a third term: "No person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice,” begins the 22nd Amendment, adopted after President Franklin Delano Roosevelt was elected four times in a row.

He was last elected in 1944. It's a fairly straightforward ban on serving more than two terms. Some Trump supporters argue the language is meant to apply only to two consecutive terms because Roosevelt's terms were consecutive, but notably that's not what the amendment says. Others contend that because the ban is just on being "elected" more than twice, Trump could run as the next president's vice president and, if the ticket won, could simply replace that person if he or she resigns, a possibility the president himself floated on Sunday.  

To put it mildly, that would be quite a complex plan to pull off, in no small part because Trump would be 82 during the next election, a year older than former President Joe Biden was during last year's campaign. Also, the Constitution says only people qualified to be president can be vice president, which would seem to bar Trump from pursuing the scheme.