Tennessee Republican Rep. Andy Ogles has provoked an outcry on social media by arguing that Donald Trump deserves a third term as president.
“Give Trump a third term, give him a Peace Prize, and let him run D.C. as long as he wants,” Ogles, 54, wrote on X on Sunday, prematurely hailing Trump before he met with European leaders on Monday as he attempts to bring an end to the war in Ukraine after an unsuccessful summit with Vladimir Putin in Alaska last week.
The congressman’s post was quickly annotated with a Community Note that pointed out that the 22nd Amendment to the U.S. Constitution states: “No person shall be elected to the office of the president more than twice, and no person who has held the office of president, or acted as president… shall be elected to the office of the president more than once.”
The same founding document declares elsewhere, incidentally, that representatives and senators “shall be bound by oath or affirmation, to support this Constitution,” a condition of which Ogles may be in violation.
The representative proposed his amendment to the Constitution earlier this year that would have enabled Trump to serve a third term. However, its chance of adoption was always minimal, given that it would have required the approval of two-thirds of the House and Senate and ratification by the legislatures of at least 38 of the 50 states.
Among those taking exception to Ogles’ post was Nina Turner, former presidential campaign manager to Vermont Democratic Sen. Bernie Sanders, who wrote: “This should be grounds for removal. This is not acceptable for a Representative, it’s blatantly unconstitutional.”
“225 days ago, you raised your right hand and swore to support & defend the Constitution of the United States. Shame on you,” said former Illinois GOP congressman Joe Walsh.
“If you’re under any illusions about what an authoritarian personality cult the GOP has become, they’re not hiding it,” stated media pundit Mehdi Hasan.
“This you?” asked Patriot Takes, quoting Ogles himself, saying of Trump as recently as March 28: “Contrary to the Left’s narrative, NOBODY is being crowned king or named dictator.”
Invited by Republicans Against Trump to critique the post, X’s AI assistant Grok answered: “The tweet proposes unconstitutional actions: a third term violates the 22nd Amendment’s two-term limit (Trump is serving his second). The Nobel Peace Prize is awarded by the Norwegian Committee, not ‘given’ by the U.S. Allowing indefinite rule undermines democracy and the Constitution.”
Perhaps most brutally of all, Justin Jones, a state representative from Ogles’ native Tennessee, commented: “If ‘pick me’ energy were a person. So embarrassing.”
The Republican is no stranger to scandal, having previously come under fire for falsely claiming he was a “trained economist,” despite picking up a C grade in the one class he ever attended.
He has also faced questions over missing funds from a children’s memorial garden and endured a storm of criticism over a family Christmas card, which portrayed the Ogles clan bearing festive assault rifles.
More recently, he provoked a storm by calling for New York mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani to be deported in a tweet that referred to him as “little muhammad” and as an “antisemitic, socialist, communist” who would “destroy” the Big Apple if he were elected.
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries responded to him in an Instagram video in June, in which he said, “Andy Ogles is a complete and total fraud. Your whole life is fake, bro. You’re a complete and total embarrassment. We need to throw you out of Congress.”
