Pam Bondi, the US attorney general, has expressed skepticism about the idea of Donald Trump serving a third term in the White House, saying that when her boss’s current presidency ends on 20 January 2029, he is probably “going to be finished”.

Bondi’s comments come just a week after Trump gave his most blunt indication yet that he was seriously considering trying for a third term to follow up ones that began in 2017 and this past January – despite the clear prohibition against doing so enshrined in the US constitution.

In an interview broadcast on 30 March, the US president told NBC News that “I’m not joking” about the idea of a third term, adding: “I like working.” Asked how he could get around what appears to be a watertight two-term cap for any individual president, he said: “There are methods which you could do it.”

Bondi’s take on the controversy carries weight because she is the top law enforcement official in the US and also a Trump loyalist whose devotion to the president is unquestioned. She told Fox News Sunday that in her opinion the president was a “very smart man, and we, I wish we could have him for 20 years as our president”.

She then added: “But I think he’s going to be finished, probably, after this term. We’d have to look at the constitution, and it would be a heavy lift.”

The two-term limit was set into stone in 1951 with the ratification by the states of the 22nd amendment. It says that “no person shall be elected to the office of the president more than twice”.

The restriction was introduced in the wake of Franklin Roosevelt’s unprecedented record of serving three full presidential terms during the second world war. He won a fourth term but died in 1945 just one year into it.

Bondi’s comment that it would be a “heavy lift” for Trump to overcome the two-term rule was a reference to what it would take to change the US constitution and revoke the 22nd amendment. Any reform to the text of the constitution requires a two-thirds vote from both chambers of Congress, combined with ratification by three-quarters of the 50 states.

In today’s highly polarized political world, such a scenario is beyond imagination.

Constitutional change aside, Trump’s cryptic remarks about other “methods” have prompted speculation about his intentions. One tactic that has attracted some attention would be for the vice-president, JD Vance, to run as Republican presidential candidate in 2028, with Trump as his running mate.

Then, the theory goes, should the Vance-Trump ticket win the presidential election, Vance could step down on day one of the new term and Trump would then automatically become president for the third time.

The strategy has an appealing simplicity. There is a major snag, however.

The 12th amendment, which lays out procedures for electing both the president and vice-president, states that “no person constitutionally ineligible to the office of President shall be eligible to that of Vice-President of the United States”. The clear implication is that Trump, debarred from running for a third term as president, would equally be debarred from running for vice-president – rendering the ruse null and void.