Does Donald Trump really think he can run for president again in 2028?

On Tuesday, in the middle of a meeting between President Trump and Democratic leaders over the impending government shutdown, red “Trump 2028” baseball caps suddenly appeared on the Resolute Desk.

“It was the strangest thing ever,” House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries told CNN.

Not really. Trump teasing a third term is getting to be, well, old hat at this point.

Last March, he told Kristen Welker, host of NBC’s “Meet the Press,” that he would not rule out pursuing an unconstitutional third White House stint. But is he serious?

“Some of this is trolling,” said Stanford law professor Pamela Karlan. “But the man has the largest ego of any person out there and he will do whatever it takes to be the center of attention.”

Not that it matters to Trump, but the 22nd Amendment is clear: No person who has been elected to the presidency twice may be elected a third time.

Still, as Trump told Welker, “I’m not joking.” And, he added, “There are methods which you could do it.”

There aren’t, actually. At least not any legal methods.

And yet, I find myself worrying that he may try.

Remember, Trump already tried to overthrow the results of 2020’s free and fair presidential election, which he lost bigly. When pressuring Georgia election officials didn’t work (“I just want to find, uh, 11,780 votes….”), the president inspired a violent mob to descend on the Capitol to prevent Congress from certifying the results. (“Hang Mike Pence,” anyone?)

At this point, the Constitution seems less a constraint than a mere sticking point for Trump as he smashmouths his way past anything that impedes his heart’s desires.

“I think the scenario in which he can legitimately — through some even remotely quasi-democratic means — stay on after January of 2029 is zero,” said Karlan, who co-directs Stanford’s Supreme Court Litigation Clinic, and served twice as a deputy assistant attorney general in the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division.

What about a scenario, though, where Trump could be, say, JD Vance’s running mate in 2028 and then return to power once Vance steps aside?

“Some people make cutesy arguments…that he should run as vice president, but I think most states would refuse to put him on the ballot,” Karlan said. “It’s an argument made by people who are cleverer than they are smart.”

On the other hand, she noted, if a pro-Trump Republican candidate were to win in 2028, Trump could function as something of a shadow president.

“He could be the power behind the president in the sense that the president could name him secretary of State,” Karlan said. “Or theoretically attorney general, even though he’s not a lawyer, or name him secretary of whatever they are calling the Defense Department at that point.”

Election law expert Rick Hasen, director of the Safeguarding Democracy Project at the UCLA School of Law, told me he’s less worried about the next presidential election and far more concerned about ways in which Trump might interfere in the 2026 midterms.

“I think 2028 is a long way off and assuming that Trump does not try to run again, he may not have that much interest in the next election because he will be done,” Hasen said. “Also, he is 79.”

In 2026, though, Trump could wreak all kinds of electoral havoc, Hasen said, such as “Sending troops to block voting in some areas, seizing voting machines, pressuring election officials to illegally count or not count valid ballots, or change the vote count — the kinds of things we saw in the aftermath of the 2020 election. I don’t think anything is off the table.”

Trump has said he will ban mail-in voting and voting machines, which he does not have the power to do, as the states regulate elections and only Congress can change the laws around that. As for deploying troops, it’s one of his favorite threats.

The president suggested Tuesday to hundreds of grim-faced generals — gathered at Quantico for Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s cringy lecture on how to be better warriors — that American cities could be the perfect “training grounds” for soldiers to practice their war-making skills.

Fortunately, Hasen told me, “people are paying attention and the fact that we have a decentralized [voting] system is effective.”

For decades, Hasen has said, he opposed the current “hyper-decentralized” system and argued that federalizing elections would make them more efficient and less likely to provoke public mistrust.

However, as Hasen recently wrote in the New York Times, “What I had not factored into my thinking was that centralizing power over elections within the federal government could be dangerous in the hands of a president not committed to democratic principles.”

The idea of limiting a president to two four-year terms was a norm established by our first president, George Washington, who didn’t want anyone getting the impression he aspired to be king. After two terms in office, 1789-97, he happily retired to Mt. Vernon.

For more than a century and a half afterward, members of Congress periodically attempted to enshrine the two-term rule into law. But it was not until 1951, several years after FDR was elected to a fourth consecutive presidential term (and died 11 weeks in) that Congress passed the 22nd Amendment and the required two-thirds of states approved it.

Some lawmakers were prescient: “Without such a limit on the number of terms a man may serve in the Presidency, the time may come when a man of vaulting ambition becomes President,” Tennessee Republican Rep. John Jennings argued in 1947. “Such a man, clothed with the vast powers of the Presidency, and backed by a subservient Congress, as Commander in Chief of our Army and Navy, could well have in his hands the two mightiest instrumentalities of government power, the sword and the purse.”

Still, the 22nd Amendment has not stopped most two-term presidents from dreaming about a third term.

President Truman, claiming the 22nd Amendment was passed by “Roosevelt haters,” urged its repeal. Nor were Presidents Eisenhower, Nixon and Reagan fans.

Even President Clinton mused during his second term, “I’d do it again if I could.”

“Think about it,” Karlan said. “You go from being the most powerful person in the world to being a has been.”

For Trump, I imagine that’s a fate worse than death.

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