Trump 2028? That would be unconstitutional : NPR

President Trump speaks to reporters on Air Force One on Monday with Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent (left) and Secretary of State Marco Rubio.

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Flying aboard Air Force One somewhere between Japan and South Korea, President Trump seemed to finally acknowledge that a third term was not in the cards.

“I have the highest numbers I’ve ever had in the polls,” Trump said wistfully. “And you know, from what I’ve read, I guess I’m not allowed to race. So we’ll see what happens.”

Trump’s job approval rating, as tracked by Gallup, is actually not at a high point — although at 41 percent, it’s not at its lowest point either.

Saying “we’ll see what happens” is a standard Trump phrase that leaves his options open. However, in this case, legal experts say there is no way around the 22nd Amendment to the Constitution.

It states: “No person may be elected to the office of president more than twice.”

“Many parts of the Constitution are unclear,” said Rick Hassen, an election law expert at the University of California, Los Angeles. “But the 22nd Amendment is very clear: no more than two terms. And it was passed because there was a president who had served more than two terms and the country thought that was wrong.”

But that hasn’t stopped Steve Bannon, an occasional Trump ally and MAGA mastermind, from talking about a third Trump term as a certainty.

How Bannon stirred the pot

“Well, he’s going to get a third term,” Bannon said in a recent interview with The Economist. “Trump will be president in 2028 and people should live with that.”

Asked about the Constitution, Bannon replied, “There are many different alternatives.”

In an interview given in April to Morning edition host Steve Inskeep, Bannon gave a little more detail.

“We’re working on some things that are right within the Constitution…and I think people will agree that there will be some very smart solutions,” Bannon said, before adding that talk of a third Trump term “explodes the heads of liberals, explodes the heads of progressives that Trump will be with them forever.”

It would be easy to dismiss this as wishful thinking or even simple trolling by a professional provocateur trying to curry favor with Trump. But the president himself has maintained this dynamic.

Monday on Air Force One, when asked about Bannon’s claims about a third term, Trump said he “would love to do it” and again said it was “very terrible” to have such good numbers.

Asked if that meant he was “not ruling it out,” Trump replied, “You have to tell me.”

However, he also suggested that Republicans have a strong bench of potential candidates for 2028 and said a ticket featuring Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio would be unbeatable. He closed one of the possible loopholes: he could run for vice president, then return to power after the president-elect leaves office.

“I think people wouldn’t like that,” Trump said. “That’s so cute. That wouldn’t be right.”

But, like Bannon, Trump leaves open the possibility of remaining in power one way or another.

What Congress has to say about it

Just outside the Oval Office, red “Trump 2028” campaign-style hats sit atop a library of products that the president shows off to visitors.

Last month, when Democratic leaders visited the White House to discuss avoiding a government shutdown, the hats appeared decidedly on the desk in the middle of the meeting.

“It was the strangest thing ever,” House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries told CNN afterward. “I just looked at the hat, I looked at JD Vance, who was sitting to my left, and I said, ‘You don’t have a problem with that?’ And he said ‘no comment’ and that was it.”

Until the White House posted photos of the meeting on Twitter with the hats clearly visible.

As Trump repeatedly talked about a third term this week, members of Congress were also asked for their opinions. House Speaker Mike Johnson said Tuesday he doesn’t see a path to a third Trump term because amending the Constitution takes a long time.

“I think the president knows that, and he and I have talked about the restrictions of the Constitution,” Johnson said. “As many Americans lament it. The Trump 2028 hat is one of the most popular ever produced, and he’s having fun with it, trolling Democrats whose hair is on fire at the very prospect.”

In an interview with NPR Here and now On Wednesday, Republican Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin also said Trump was simply lagging behind.

Brendan Nyhan, a government professor at Dartmouth College, says it doesn’t matter whether, right now, the president is serious or not.

“We’ll probably hear about it over the next three years, because he likes it,” Nyhan said. “It gets the kind of reaction he wants and it serves his political purpose.”

Trump is both blowing liberals’ heads off — as Bannon said — and trying to delay becoming a lame-duck president, whose power is diminishing as the campaign for his replacement intensifies.

Nyhan said the fact that anyone is talking about it is a symptom of what he calls an “authoritarian malaise” in the country.

“It is deeply destabilizing to question something as egregious as the 22nd Amendment, which explicitly excludes Trump ‘jokes,’” said Nyhan, who runs Bright Line Watch, which monitors the state of American democracy. “We’ve seen him time and time again joke about things he intends to encourage or at least seems to tacitly approve of.”

During his second term, Trump has dramatically expanded his executive power, while congressional Republicans applaud or shrug.

“Is it possible that he’s going to try to suspend the election, suspend the Constitution and run for a third term,” said Rick Hassen, who directs UCLA’s Saving Democracy Project.

“All of these things are possible, but it means we’re no longer the American democracy we once had, and the country is in real trouble. But if you ask what the legal path to a third term is, it’s just not there.”

Plus, he asked slyly, would Trump really want to run for a third term against former President Barack Obama? (Trump says he would.)

NPR Saige Miller contributed to this report.