Former Trump White House chief strategist Steve Bannon is confident that President Trump will get a third term and even said there’s a plan in place.
Mr. Bannon was adamant that “he’s gonna get a third term.”
“Trump is going to be president in ‘28 and people ought to just get accommodated with that,” Mr. Bannon said in an interview with The Economist.
Under the 22nd Amendment, which says no person can hold more than two terms of the presidency, Mr. Trump cannot run again.
Mr. Bannon said, “There’s many different alternatives. At the appropriate time, we’ll lay out what the plan is, but there is a plan, and Trump will be the president in ‘28.”
“We had longer odds in ’16 and longer odds in ’24 than we’ve got in ’28,” he said. “The country needs him to be president of the United States. We have to finish what we started.”
Congress would have to repeal the 22nd Amendment for Mr. Trump to be eligible to run for a third term in office.
Asked if finding a way for Mr. Trump to run for a third term would be “undermining the spirit” of the 22nd Amendment, Mr. Bannon pushed back, saying, “If the American people, with the mechanisms we have, put Trump back in office, are the American people tearing up the Constitution?”
He also rejected the idea that a third term would look like 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 said.
Mr. Bannon said the president is a “vehicle of divine providence.”
“He’s an instrument of divine will, and you can tell this of how he’s pulled this off. We need him for at least one more term,” he said.
Mr. Bannon isn’t the only Republican to have floated the idea of a third Trump term.
Rep. Randy Fine, Florida Republican, said earlier this month that if Mr. Trump is successful in obtaining peace in the Middle East, “we should repeal the 22nd Amendment and thank the Lord for every day @realdonaldtrump can be our President.”
Mr. Trump himself has toyed with the idea, resulting in a “will they, won’t they” to whether his name will be on the ballot box in November 2028.
In March, he told NBC News that he wasn’t ruling out a third-term run, but that it was too early to consider.
However, in August he told CNBC’s Squawk Box that he would “probably not” seek a third term.
Still, the Trump Store online sells Trump 2028 hats, and the hats have been spotted on his desk in the Oval Office.
Earlier this week, Mr. Trump posted an edited video on Truth Social of Time magazine’s 2018 cover story “How Trumpism will outlast Trump,” which featured photos of lawn signs that had “Trump 2024” up to “Trump 2044.”
In the video, Mr. Trump is standing behind the last lawn sign that reads “Trump 4Eva.”
