- Bannon and Trump allies openly entertain a third presidential term, testing constitutional limits and normalizing authoritarian talk.
- Critics warn this rhetoric risks institutional erosion and could provoke political violence comparable to a civil war.
WASHINGTON — Barely a year into his non-consecutive second term, President Donald Trump is already casting a long shadow over the 2028 election cycle.
While the 47th president focuses on border security, tariff wars, and what he calls a “golden age” for America, a chorus of loyalists has begun testing the waters for something bolder: a third term that would upend a cornerstone of the U.S. Constitution.
It’s the kind of talk that once seemed like late-night trolling on social media, but recent statements from Trump’s inner circle have turned it into a simmering national debate, one that’s got legal scholars sharpening their pencils and Democrats dusting off their alarm bells.
The FrankNez Media Daily Briefing newsletter provides all the news you need to start your day. Sign up here.
The latest spark came from Steve Bannon, the firebrand podcaster and Trump’s former White House chief strategist, who dropped the mic in an interview with The Economist this week.
“He’s gonna get a third term,” Bannon declared flatly. “Trump is gonna be president in ’28, and people just sort of need to get accommodated with that.”
When pressed on the 22nd Amendment — the 1951 safeguard that caps presidents at two elected terms, born out of fears over Franklin D. Roosevelt’s four-term run — Bannon brushed it off with a cryptic nod to “different alternatives.”
He didn’t spell them out, but the implication hung heavy: there’s a playbook, and it’s being workshopped right now.
Bannon’s not alone in this orbit. Back in December 2024, fresh off Trump’s electoral comeback, the ex-aide had already teased the idea at a New York Young Republican Club gala.
“Since it doesn’t actually say consecutive,” he quipped to cheers from the crowd, “I don’t know, maybe we do it again in ’28? Are you guys down for that? Trump ’28?”
It’s the sort of line that lands like red meat at a MAGA rally, but it also echoes Trump’s own history of toying with the edges of norms.
Remember those edited Time magazine covers he posted in 2019, stretching his imagined campaigns out to 2032 and beyond?
Or the “Trump 2028” hats popping up on the Resolute Desk and his official merch store by April 2025, with son Eric Trump modeling one like it was the next big thing?
For all the bravado, Trump himself has played it coy. On Election Day 2024, when a New York Times reporter cornered him about whether the campaign was his last, he shrugged: “I would think so.”
A few months earlier, in a September sit-down on the Full Measure TV show, he was even blunter: “No, I don’t” see myself running in 2028 if he lost to Kamala Harris.
“That will be it.” But victory changes the math, and lately, the president has leaned into the buzz. In a recent Fox News appearance, he mused, “People are asking me to run, and there’s a whole story about running for a third term. I don’t know, I never looked into it. They do say there’s a way you can do it, but I don’t know about that.”
It’s classic Trump — half-joke, half-trial balloon — but it keeps the pot bubbling.
Violation of the 22nd Amendment Will Lead to Dictatorship in America
The constitutional roadblock couldn’t be clearer. The 22nd Amendment states plainly: “No person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice.”
Ratified in the shadow of FDR’s marathon tenure, it’s barred every two-termer since — Eisenhower, Nixon, Reagan, Clinton, Bush, Obama — from another go.
Trump’s non-consecutive wins in 2016 and 2024 put him squarely in that club, with no wiggle room for a third election.
Legal experts like Stanford’s Michael McConnell have hammered this home, stating, “There are none. This will be his last run for president.”
Even wild theories, like Trump running as vice president under JD Vance in 2028 and then ascending if Vance steps aside, crumble under scrutiny.
The 12th Amendment’s qualifications for the presidency would likely nix that, too.
Yet the chatter persists, and it’s not just Bannon. In January 2025, Rep. Andy Ogles (R-Tenn.) introduced a House joint resolution to tweak the amendment, allowing up to three terms as long as the first two aren’t back-to-back.
“President Trump’s decisive leadership stands in stark contrast to the chaos, suffering, and economic decline Americans have endured over the past four years,” Ogles argued in a press release, framing it as a bid to “sustain the bold leadership our nation so desperately needs.”
Fast-forward to October, and Florida state Rep. Randy Fine piled on, tweeting that if Trump’s Gaza ceasefire holds, “we should repeal the 22nd Amendment and thank the Lord for every day Donald Trump can be our President.”
Repealing it? That’d take two-thirds majorities in Congress and ratification by 38 states — a moonshot in today’s polarized gridlock, according to experts.
Critics aren’t laughing. Rick Wilson, the sharp-tongued ex-GOP strategist turned anti-Trump gadfly, unloaded on Bannon’s Economist interview in a fiery Substack post Friday.
“This is how authoritarians advance: by saying the quiet part out loud until it isn’t quiet anymore,” Wilson wrote.
“They float the balloon, smirk while you sputter, then call your protest hysteria. The goal isn’t persuasion; it’s habituation.”
He dismissed the “he’s trolling” excuse as “the laziest cope of the era,” warning that Democrats and the media need to quit treating these as punchlines.
“Stop laundering ‘there’s a plan’ as colorful color; demand the specifics and map the network that’s gaming the rules,” he urged.
“Believe him. The way you stop an authoritarian ‘plan’ is not with another horrified op-ed in 2028.”
Wilson’s direst line? “With God as my witness, this will lead America into a violent moment unlike any since the Civil War.”
He painted Bannon’s endgame as a deliberate push toward chaos, one where “no one who starts the next civil war is safe from an America that has had the grim results of two terms of Trump rammed down their throats.”
Republicans Aren’t So Sure of the Idea Either
It’s hyperbolic, sure, but it captures the raw nerve this strikes in a country still raw from January 6 and the 2020 election fight.
Even some Republicans are side-eyeing the noise. Nebraska Rep. Don Bacon called Bannon’s talk “some of the stupidest… I have ever heard,” telling a local station, “We have an amendment that limits a president to two terms and only people in the strangest of echo chambers and bubbles can believe that there is going to be a third term.”
And over on X, Trump’s own War Room account — the punchy digital arm of his operation — has been having a field day with the memes.
Last month, they crowed about Trump gifting “Trump 2028” swag to House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, complete with a crying emoji.
Earlier this summer, posts hyped an executive order for a White House task force on the 2028 Summer Olympics in L.A., with Trump declaring, “America is a nation of champions, and in July 2028 we’ll show the world what America does best—and that’s WIN.”
As for 2028 itself, the field’s already taking shape without Trump in the mix.
Wikipedia’s early rundown lists potential GOP contenders like Vance, Tulsi Gabbard (who’s “never ruled out” a run), Rand Paul, and even Donald Trump Jr., who told the Financial Times in June that a family dynasty “would be an easy one” and he could do the job “very effectively.”
On the Dem side, it’s a scramble post-Harris, with swing states like Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Georgia looming large after Trump’s narrow 2024 sweeps there.
This third-term talk isn’t just idle noise; it’s a symptom of how Trump’s grip on the GOP — and the national conversation — refuses to loosen.
With his approval ratings hovering in the mid-40s amid economic jitters and foreign flare-ups, the idea of extending the MAGA era feels less like fantasy and more like a pressure test for American institutions.
Will it fizzle into another forgotten meme?
Or is it the opening salvo in a bigger battle over what democracy looks like? One thing’s certain: in Trumpworld, the show never really ends.
Also Read: A DOJ Whistleblower Now Makes Revelation That Undermines the Judicial System’s Integrity
