President Donald Trump is once again floating the idea of running for another term.
“RECORD NUMBERS ALL OVER THE PLACE! SHOULD I TRY FOR A FOURTH TERM?” he wrote on Truth Social on Thursday evening.
The Constitution prohibits Trump from serving another term; the 22nd Amendment reads: “No person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice, and no person who has held the office of President, or acted as President, for more than two years of a term to which some other person was elected President shall be elected to the office of the President more than once.”
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But Trump and his allies have repeatedly suggested the possibility of him running for office again. Last year, the Trump Organization started selling hats that say “Trump 2028” and t-shirts that say “Trump 2028 (Rewrite the Rules).”
In October, the President told reporters that he “would love to” run for another term. When reporters questioned if he was ruling out the idea, he replied, “Am I not ruling it out? I mean, you’ll have to tell me.” Just days before that, his former chief strategist Steve Bannon, who has supported the idea of Trump serving another term, told The Economist that there is a “plan” to get around the 22nd Amendment. Bannon didn’t share what the plan entailed, but said there are “many different alternatives” and the details would be shared “at the appropriate time.”
The President has also previously falsely suggested that a hypothetical “third term” would actually be his “fourth term.” Last year, he told reporters that “in a way,” a third term would be a “fourth term because the other election, the 2020 election was totally rigged.” Trump has repeatedly spread conspiracy theories about the 2020 election being “stolen” from him.
Despite Trump’s claim that he’s receiving “record numbers all over the place,” his approval rating is underwater—though he continues to receive strong support from his base. Only about 4 in 10 U.S. adults approve of his performance in his second term, according to an AP-NORC poll from earlier this month. A majority of voters—56%—disapprove of how he has addressed several major issues, including the economy, immigration, managing the federal government, and the cost of living, according to a New York Times-Siena poll released on Thursday. And about 49% of respondents in the Times-Siena poll said that they believed the U.S. was worse off than it was a year ago, before Trump was sworn in for a second term. Less than a third felt that the country was faring better.
Trump railed against the Times-Siena poll on social media, saying that he would include the poll in his “lawsuit against The Failing New York Times” and claiming, without providing evidence, that the results were “fake.”
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