House Speaker Mike Johnson claims to have spoken with President Donald Trump about his threats of running again in 2028.
“I don’t see a path for that,” Johnson told reporters at a Tuesday news conference. “I think he knows and he and I talked about the restrictions of the Constitution,” the speaker added, claiming to have just gotten off the phone with Trump only an hour before.
It follows after the president, who it emerged only last week has privately joked about Johnson being his puppet, sparked widespread alarm Monday with comments about how well he believes he’d do if he did launch what would be his fourth bid for the White House.
“I would love to do it,” Trump told journalists aboard Air Force One while en route to Japan. “I have my best numbers ever.”
“Am I not ruling it out? You’ll have to tell me,” the president said. “All I can tell you is that we have a great, a great group of people, which they don’t,” he added of his opponents in the Democratic Party.”
There isn’t an awful lot of ambiguity to the Constitution’s 22nd Amendment, which clearly states: “No person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice.”
Trump has been elected president twice. Pressed on whether he’d be willing to launch a legal fight for the chance, he said “I haven’t really thought about it.”
“We have some very good people, as you know, but I’ve had, I have the best poll numbers I’ve ever had,” he added.
Trump is currently polling at 45 percent approval. That’s a solid four points below his all-time high of 49 percent at the outbreak of COVID-19, but admittedly higher than the 34 percent he garnered after allegedly instigating the Jan. 6 Capitol Riot back in 2021.
While the MAGA leader might appear laissez-faire about his prospects of a successful fourth bid for the White House—by which time he’d be 82, and the oldest person ever to run for the nation’s highest office—his allies would appear to have been hard at work boning up on whatever options he may have.
“Trump is going to be president in ‘28, and people ought to just get accommodated with that,” convicted fraudster and former Trump adviser Steve Bannon said only last week. “At the appropriate time, we’ll lay out what the plan is,” he went on, offering scant details.
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