Donald Trump is a lot of things. I’ve written a lot about him in the past, none of it positive, so I’m not going to wax poetic about how much I don’t like him, what he’s done, or the direction in which he’s leading this country. That’s what I thought the theme of this piece was going to be, until I hear his quotes about President Xi Jinping of China.

Now, there’s a huge problem with dictators and those who act like them. I don’t like them on principle; I have a problem with one person wielding a significant amount of power over a whole nation (presidents and prime ministers and other offices that control governments democratically have checks and balances), and I have an even bigger problem when censorship comes into play. So, take a leader that fits both of these categories, and there’s someone that I don’t like on principle. When President Xi set himself up to be president for life, I felt that that was a huge problem, morally.

So when our President says that Authoritarian rule-until-you-die legislation would be great and that “maybe we’ll have to give it a shot someday,” there was only one thing that I could think of.

WHAT?

At first I wondered if he was serious, but then I realized that that could be a normalization of his behavior, so I scrapped the notion that he was joking.

We haven’t had a president serve over two terms since FDR served four, who died in office during his fourth in the mid-1940s. The 22^nd Amendment, ratified in the early 50s and which prevents any president from serving more than two terms, is literally embedded in our Constitution.

Like with Judge Aquilina, who presided over the case of Larry Nassar, I find it highly disturbing and flat-out unsettling when officials in high positions of power within the government (a judge and a president) disparage the Constitution so flagrantly. This, of course, is related to that the investigation of Trump’s election, led by Robert Mueller, is ongoing. I also think that he’s toeing the line, seeing how much exactly he can get away with before going on to his next topic.

Frankly, I don’t see the reasoning behind his words, and what spooks me the most is that he said them so loosely, like they almost didn’t matter. The tone of the quote is almost conversational. Even being the least popular president in history hasn’t stopped him from thinking, “gee, I’d really like to keep this going for as long as I live.”

It’s a good thing that in order for this to happen, there’d have to be a major vote. There would also probably have to be a new amendment ratified to null the old one, similar to the way Prohibition was annexed and later repealed. With a country this split on politics, right down the middle, there’s no way a compromise like this would ever see the light of day, let alone the floor of a Senate chamber meeting. The realm of possibility simply doesn’t encompass a grab for power like this. But, it still worries me. I’m not surprised that this came out of Trump’s mouth, and you shouldn’t either, no matter what you believe in. But all the same, for a democratically elected president to say something like that, it should send a bit of a shiver down your spine.