President Donald Trump is finally admitting what the Constitution has said all along: He can’t run for a third term.
“If you read it, it’s pretty clear. I’m not allowed to run. It’s too bad,” Trump told reporters on Wednesday aboard Air Force One en route to South Korea, the final stop on his three-country tour of Asia.
It’s a rare moment of acknowledgment from a man who’s spent months flirting with the idea of a third term—something the 22nd Amendment explicitly forbids.
Trumpstore.com has been selling “Trump 2028” hats for $50 a pop.
Still, Trump being Trump, even his concession came with caveats. Days earlier, he said he’d “love” to run again in 2028 but added it “wouldn’t be right,” since others could carry the torch. He’s singled out Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Vice President JD Vance as possible successors.
On Monday, he also suggested he’d win easily if he did decide to run again.
“We have some very good people, as you know, but I’ve had, I have the best poll numbers I’ve ever had,” he said.
That claim doesn’t hold up. According to election analyst Nate Silver, Trump’s approval rating this week sits at 43.3%—below his 49% peak early in the COVID-19 pandemic but above the 34% he hit after Jan. 6.
Trump and his allies have long teased ways to skirt the two-term limit. He’s even joked about “methods” like having Vance run and then hand power back to him. Legal scholars say that kind of talk makes for good cable news fodder but would collapse under constitutional scrutiny. Amending the Constitution is nearly impossible, especially in today’s political climate.
If Trump’s hints are half in jest, Steve Bannon’s are not. The convicted ex-Trump adviser and MAGA media figure told The Economist last week there’s already a “plan” to keep Trump in power beyond 2029.
“Trump is going to be president in ’28, and people ought to just get accommodated with that,” Bannon said. “At the appropriate time, we’ll lay out what the plan is.” He offered no details—only that Trump is an “instrument of divine will.”
Related | MAGA suckers rejoice! Trump's got a fun new way to take your money
That kind of rhetoric mirrors Trump’s own messianic framing. After surviving two assassination attempts in 2024, he’s cast himself as a man spared by God to “make America great again,” declaring at his inauguration that “nothing can stop what is coming.”
Talk of a third term picked up again after Rep. Andy Ogles of Tennessee introduced a doomed constitutional amendment in January to make it possible. Even some of Trump’s allies, though, have poured cold water on the idea.
House Speaker Mike Johnson told reporters this week that while Democrats’ “hair is on fire about the very prospect” of a third term, he doesn’t see a way forward.
“I think the president knows, and he and I have talked about the constrictions of the Constitution,” Johnson said.
For now, Trump seems focused on grooming a successor.
“We have great people,” he said this week, praising Rubio and Vance. “If they formed a group, they’d be unstoppable.”
Asked whether he’d consider a vice-presidential slot himself, Trump waved it off.
“Yeah, I’d be allowed to do that,” he said. “I think it’s too cute. The people wouldn’t like that. It’s too cute. It’s not—it wouldn’t be right.”
Vance, for his part, is playing the loyal understudy. On the New York Post’s “Pod Force One,” released Wednesday, the vice president called talk of a 2028 run “premature.”
“My attitude is the American people elected me to be vice president,” Vance said. “I’m going to work as hard as I can to make the president successful over the next three years and three months.”
“We’re still so early,” he added. “If we take care of business, the politics will take care of itself.”
Trump insists he’s “not really thinking about it,” but his campaign store is already selling $50 “Trump 2028” hats.
Constitutional or not, that’s never stopped him before—and with a party full of loyalists unwilling to challenge him, it’s hard to imagine it will now.
