If Trump won in 2024, could he run for a second term?
Senate voted not to convict him of an impeachable offence for a second time
Donald Trump made history in becoming the first president in US history to be impeached twice by the House of Representatives.
But that doesn't mean that he is done with politics and now he has hinted that he may run for the White House again in 2024, telling his supporters they should have “hope.”
The ex-president is free to run again for office as he was acquitted in the Senate for a second time in February.
And he dropped his strongest hint yet in a new interview with daughter-in-law Lara Trump on her podcast The Right View.
“You do have hope, that I can tell you,” Mr Trump said in his first on-camera interview since leaving Washington DC in January.
“You do have hope. We love our country — this country. We all owe a lot to our country but now we have to help our country.”
Ms Trump then asked him if his supporters would ever get to attend another MAGA rally.
“Oh yeah, sure, I think so. In fact, we’re thinking about doing one relatively soon just to let everybody know that there’s hope in the future,” he added.
This all became a real possibility when the Senate failed to convict Mr Trump at his trial on 13 February after the shortest impeachment trial in presidential history.
Mr Trump was impeached for an unprecedented second time in January in the House by a vote of 232-197, with 10 Republicans joining Democrats against him.
He was found guilty by the Democratic-dominated House of Representatives on one charge of incitement for urging his supporters to "fight like hell" before they attacked the Capitol on 6 January and tried to prevent the certification of Joe Biden's election victory.
If the Senate had also voted to convict Mr Trump then he could have been barred from ever standing again. However, only seven Republicans voted to convict along with all 50 Democrats on 13 February – 10 fewer than the two-thirds majority needed to find the former president guilty.
Under the Constitution, “judgment in cases of impeachment shall not extend further than to removal from office, and disqualification to hold and enjoy any office of honor, trust or profit under the United States.”
Only three elected officials, former federal judges West Humphreys, Robert Archibald, and Thomas Porteous, have ever been permanently barred from holding future office in American history.
The Constitution does not specify if the vote to disqualify needs a super majority, but the Senate has in the past used a simple majority for disqualification.
Before the impeachment trial even began 45 out of 50 Republican Senators voted that it was not constitutional and should not go ahead, which made it a long shot to reach the two-thirds required to convict.
While the 2024 presidential election is a long way off, Mr Trump remains the most popular figure in his party, with 42 per cent of Republicans saying they would vote for him in four years, according to a Politico/Morning Consult poll.
This was down from 54 per cent in the wake of the Capitol riot but still put him ahead of other potential candidates, such as Mike Pence with 16 per cent, Donald trump Jr with 6 per cent, Ted cruz with six per cent, six per cent for Mitt Romney and five per cent for Nikki Haley.
