Donald Trump’s eyes seemed to brighten when he heard the idea of delaying an election in order to remain in power. This happened while he was sitting in the Oval Office with Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky. Zelensky had just explained why Ukraine postponed its last election, saying it was because of the ongoing war with Russia.
Trump has often hinted that he would like to stay in office even after his legal term is over. He has also openly toyed with the idea of using war as an excuse to cancel the next U.S. election, which would give him a way to hold onto power. Such a move would be unconstitutional, since the U.S. Constitution clearly limits a president to two terms.
This is not the first time Trump has been accused of trying to stay in office against the rules. After losing the 2020 election to Joe Biden by millions of votes, Trump refused to accept the result. He was impeached for his efforts to overturn the election, and he continues to insist—without any proof—that the election was “rigged” or “corrupt.” His repeated claims, along with his support for policies that critics describe as authoritarian, have left many Americans worried about whether he will actually step down willingly when his time is up.
During the conversation with Zelensky, Trump mused out loud about how a war might give him the opportunity to avoid an election altogether. He said, “So let me just say three and a half years from now—so you mean, if we happen to be in a war with somebody, no more elections, oh, I wonder what the fake news would say.” Zelensky responded by explaining that in Ukraine, holding an election during a war is extremely difficult and that a ceasefire would be necessary to make it safe.
Trump then launched into one of his familiar speeches, this time about mail-in voting. He claimed, without evidence, that mail-in ballots are insecure and open to fraud. He argued that other countries don’t use mail-in ballots, even though nations like the UK, Germany, Canada, Australia, India, and Switzerland all use them successfully without widespread problems. Despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, Trump has long called mail-in ballots corrupt and points to them as the main reason he falsely claims the 2020 election was stolen from him.
He even said that Russian president Vladimir Putin agreed with him about mail-in voting. But Russian elections are widely considered neither free nor fair, with heavy evidence of corruption. Still, Trump insisted, “Mail-in ballots are corrupt. You can never have a real democracy with mail-in ballots.” He promised that Republicans would do everything possible to eliminate mail-in voting, starting with an executive order to ban it entirely.
