Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump said Sun­day that “I’m not jok­ing” about try­ing to serve a third term, the clear­est in­di­ca­tion he is con­sid­er­ing ways to breach a con­sti­tu­tion­al bar­ri­er against con­tin­u­ing to lead the coun­try af­ter his sec­ond term ends in ear­ly 2029.

“There are meth­ods which you could do it,” Trump said in a tele­phone in­ter­view with NBC News.

He al­so said “it is far too ear­ly to think about it.”

The 22nd Amend­ment, added to the Con­sti­tu­tion in 1951 af­ter Pres­i­dent Franklin D. Roo­sevelt was elect­ed four times in a row, says “no per­son shall be elect­ed to the of­fice of the Pres­i­dent more than twice.”

NBC’s Kris­ten Welk­er asked Trump if one po­ten­tial av­enue to a third term was hav­ing Vice Pres­i­dent JD Vance run for the top job and “then pass the ba­ton to you.”

“Well, that’s one,” Trump re­spond­ed. “But there are oth­ers too. There are oth­ers.”

“Can you tell me an­oth­er?” Welk­er asked in the ear­ly morn­ing in­ter­view, be­fore Trump left his Mar-a-La­go re­sort to spend the day at his near­by golf course.

“No,” Trump replied.

Vance’s of­fice did not im­me­di­ate­ly re­spond to a re­quest for com­ment from The As­so­ci­at­ed Press.

Derek Muller, a pro­fes­sor of elec­tion law at Notre Dame, not­ed that the 12th Amend­ment, which was rat­i­fied in 1804, says “no per­son con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly in­el­i­gi­ble to the of­fice of Pres­i­dent shall be el­i­gi­ble to that of Vice-Pres­i­dent of the Unit­ed States.”

Muller said that in­di­cates that if Trump is not el­i­gi­ble to run for pres­i­dent again be­cause of the 22nd Amend­ment, he is not el­i­gi­ble to run for vice pres­i­dent, ei­ther.

“I don’t think there’s any ‘one weird trick’ to get­ting around pres­i­den­tial term lim­its,” Muller said.

In ad­di­tion, pur­su­ing a third term would re­quire ex­tra­or­di­nary ac­qui­es­cence by fed­er­al and state of­fi­cials, not to men­tion the courts and vot­ers them­selves.

He sug­gest­ed that Trump is talk­ing about a third term for po­lit­i­cal rea­sons to “show as much strength as pos­si­ble.”

“A lame-duck pres­i­dent like Don­ald Trump has every in­cen­tive in the world to make it seem like he’s not a lame duck,” he said.

Trump, who would be 82 at the end of his sec­ond term, was asked whether he would want to keep serv­ing in “the tough­est job in the coun­try” at that point.

“Well, I like work­ing,” the pres­i­dent said.

He sug­gest­ed that Amer­i­cans would go along with a third term be­cause of his pop­u­lar­i­ty. He false­ly claimed to have “the high­est poll num­bers of any Re­pub­li­can for the last 100 years.”

Gallup da­ta shows Pres­i­dent George W. Bush reach­ing a 90% ap­proval rat­ing af­ter the at­tacks on Sept. 11, 2001. His fa­ther, Pres­i­dent George H.W. Bush, hit 89% fol­low­ing the Gulf War in 1991.

Trump has maxed out at 47% in Gallup da­ta dur­ing his sec­ond term, de­spite claim­ing to be “in the high 70s in many polls, in the re­al polls.”

Trump has mused be­fore about serv­ing longer than two terms be­fore, gen­er­al­ly with jokes to friend­ly au­di­ences.

“Am I al­lowed to run again?” he said dur­ing a House Re­pub­li­can re­treat in Jan­u­ary.

Rep­re­sen­ta­tives for the con­gres­sion­al lead­er­ship — House Speak­er Mike John­son, R-La., House De­mo­c­ra­t­ic leader Ha­keem Jef­fries of New York, Sen­ate Ma­jor­i­ty Leader John Thune, R-S.D., and Sen­ate De­mo­c­ra­t­ic leader Chuck Schumer of New York — did not im­me­di­ate­ly re­spond to re­quests for com­ment from the AP.

By CHRIS MEGERIAN

WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. (AP)