Barack Obama said he misses the "fascinating" work of the presidency, revealing that he would have liked to remain president for a third term. Speaking with host of "The Late Show" Stephen Colbert, Obama noted that he would have done it only in a "stand in" capacity.
"If I could make an arrangement where I had a stand-in, a frontman or frontwoman, and they had an earpiece in and I was just in my basement in my sweats looking through the stuff, then I could sort of deliver the lines but somebody else was doing all the talking and ceremony, then I'd be fine with that because I found the work fascinating", he told Colbert, adding that he doesn't miss wearing a tie for work "every day".
During the interview to promote his memoirs, Obama also harshly criticised Donald Trump. First he took a jab at the Republican by jokingly discussing that "there's a whole bunch of stuff" that a head of state doesn't actually have to do.
"Respond to subpoenas", said Colbert. To that Obama retorted tongue-in-cheek: "Follow the Constitution".
After that, the two faulted Trump for the latter's refusal to concede defeat in the presidential election. Trump has claimed that the vote was rigged by the Democrats and although he said he will leave if the Electoral College names Joe Biden the winner, he said that the Democrat would need to prove that "his ridiculous 80,000,000 votes were not fraudulently or illegally obtained".
Obama compared the situation to a Super Bowl where the defeated team claims "field goals aren't worth three" or "that wasn't really a touchdown".
“We've all been watching. And I guess if you had the other team just refuse to acknowledge it, and you had half the league say we're not sure it's true, you'd have a similar controversy. But when that starts happening, the game itself breaks down. And in this case it's not a game, it's our democracy. Imagine if, going forward, every single election is treated this way at every level. Imagine if Democrats start acting this way", Obama told Colbert.
Could Obama Run for a Third Term?
After the first president of the United States George Washington refused to run for re-election following his second term there was an unwritten rule that no one could run for another term. Although two individuals reportedly wanted to break this rule - Ulysses S. Grant and Theodore Roosevelt.
It was after Franklin Delano Roosevelt ran for a third and fourth term due to the fallout from the Great Depression and US participation in the Second World War, lawmakers became concerned about the abuse of power. In 1947, two years after Roosevelt's death, Congress passed the 22nd Amendment to the constitution, barring the president from running for a third term. The amendment was ratified in 1951.