One ofDonald Trump’sfiercest allies and formerWhite HouseChief Strategist,Steve Bannon,has said in no uncertain terms thatTrump will be president in 2028.
Sitting down withtwo journalists from The Economist,Bannon seemed certain that Trump would get a third term, which is prohibited by the 22nd Amendment to the Constitution.
‘Trump is gonna be president in twenty-eight, and people just thought I’d get accommodated with that,’ he said.
‘There’s a plan. President Trump will be the president in 2028. We had longer odds in 2016 and longer odds in 2024 than we will have in 2028.’
When pressed about how that would work, given the banning of a third term as President, Bannon claimed the US ‘needs’ him to be President to ‘finish what we started’.
‘He’s an instrument, very imperfect, not churchy, not particularly religious, but an instrument of divine will. You could tell how we’ve pulled this off. We need him for at least one more term,’ he added.
Bannon even went as far as to suggest that the public would justify a ‘quasi-dictatorship’.
‘The only way President Trump wins in 2028 and continues to stay in office is by the will of the American people. And the will of the American people is what the Constitution embodies,’ he rambled.
‘I think we’re gonna be in good hands there. We need to finish what we started, and President Trump is the providential instrument to finish that job.’
Trump himself has flouted the idea before. In a morning phone call with NBC News, he said, ‘I am not joking,’ when asked to clarify a remark on seeking another term, adding, ‘There are methods which you could do it.’
He has previously ‘joked’ about running for life, reminding of authoritarians likeRussia’sVladimir Putin,Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdoğan andChina’s Xi Jinping.
What are the current rules in the Constitution?
Under the 22nd Amendment, no person can be president more than twice. It was added to the Constitution in 1951 after Franklin D. Roosevelt was elected four times in a row.
It 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.’
Amending the US Constitution to allow a third presidential term would require a two-thirds majority in both the House of Representatives and Senate, which Trump’sRepublican Partydoes not have, or a constitutional convention called by two thirds of the states that would propose changes to the charter.
Both routes appear to be unlikely, given the current number of states and Congressional seats under Republican control.
Whether he goes through Congress or the states, he would then require ratification from three-quarters of all state legislatures.
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