Former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon openly shared that there are plans to help President Donald Trump circumvent the 22nd Amendment and secure a third presidential term.
In an interview with The Economist, Bannon told the magazine’s editors, “He’s gonna get a third term, Trump ‘28, Trump is gonna be president ‘28 so people just ought to get accommodated with that.”
When asked by editor-in-chief Zanny Minton Beddoes about the 22nd Amendment, Bannon replied, “There’s many different alternatives. At the appropriate time, we’ll lay out what the plan is, but there’s a plan and President Trump will be the president in ‘28.” The Daily Beast has contacted the White House for comment.
Bannon continued, arguing that Trump had “longer odds in ‘16 and longer odds in ‘24″ than he does looking ahead at the 2028 election, adding that “the country needs him to be President of the United States. We have to finish what we started.”
He went on to call Trump an “instrument of divine will” despite not being “churchy” or “particularly religious”, explaining that “you can tell this from how he’s pulled this off.”
“We need him for at least one more term, and he’ll get that in ‘28.”
Bannon’s rhetoric echoes that deployed by others in Trump’s orbit, including Trump himself, with the president frequently alluding to the possibility of a third term despite the 22nd Amendment limiting presidents to only serving two. On Sunday, the president posted a video to Truth Social that showed him ruling not just through 2032, but forever.
In a March interview with NBC News, Trump said that “a lot of people” wanted him to seek a third term, and that while he was “focused on the current [term],” there “are methods which you could do it.”
Asked by NBC about those methods, including a scenario where Vice President JD Vance runs for president and then passes the role to Trump, the president said, “that’s one, but there are others, too.” He declined to provide examples of other potential methods.
Constitutional scholar and former Harvard professor Laurence Tribe has warned people against assuming that the 22nd Amendment—and the 12th, which outlines how the president and vice president are elected—completely protects against a third term.
“Anyone discounting a 3d Trump term per the 22d am + the 12th am is thinking magically,” he wrote on X in March. “The 22d dsn’t bar *serving* a 3d term, only being *elected* 3 times. The 12th dsn’t bar running for VP unless “ineligible” to serve as Pres, but Trump isn’t ineligible. QED!”
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