FILE PHOTO: U.S. President Donald Trump speaks in the Oval Office at the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., August 6, 2025. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst/File Photo

A retired conservative federal judge is urging Americans that President Donald Trump's talk of seeking a third term seriously.

During a Tuesday segment on MSNBC, former U.S. 4th Circuit Court of Appeals Judge J. Michael Luttig said that Trump entertaining a third term shouldn't be dismissed outright given how institutions have largely failed to keep him in check. He also said that despite the 22nd Amendment to the U.S. Constitution's ban on presidents being elected to more than two terms, it was unlikely that Congress and the Supreme Court would stop Trump.

"In the the ten months that he's been president, this time, he has ... seized essentially an absolute and unchecked power in the United States of America that is unchecked by the two coordinate branches of government," Luttig said.

"In America, though the Constitution provides for a system of checks and balances on the powers of the three coordinate branches in ten months, Donald Trump has seized — mostly unconstitutional or in violation of the laws of the United States — all of the power of the entire federal government, including that of the Congress and the Supreme Court," he added.

Luttig — who retired from the bench in 2006 after being appointed by former President George H.W. Bush in 1991 — argued that Trump is the first president in history who has surpassed the Constitutional system of checks and balances. And he added that by cowing the other two branches of government into submission, Constitutional obstacles matter little to Trump.

"He sought that power. And at this point, he possesses that power," he said. "And with that power amassed for the first time in American history, unconstitutionally, there is nothing and no one who can stop Donald Trump from running for election to an unconstitutional third term and being the next president of the United States, notwithstanding the votes of the American people."

Earlier on Tuesday, Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.) suggested that a third Trump term could be in the cards, saying there would "have to be an evaluation from President Trump’s viewpoint to the Constitution" and that Americans shouldn't "ever close the book on President Trump." And former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon told the Economist last week that there was already a "plan" underway to have Trump serve for an illegal and unconstitutional third term.

Watch the segment below:

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