WASHINGTON (dpa-AFX) – The ultra-right journalist and former campaign strategist for US President Donald Trump, Steve Bannon, expects the Republican to run for a third term. “He will get a third term,” Bannon said in an interview published on Thursday in the British weekly newspaper “The Economist” – without explaining how this would work constitutionally.
“At the appropriate time we will present our plan, but there is a plan,” he said. Trump will become president again in the 2028 election “and people will just have to come to terms with that,” said Bannon. According to the 22nd Amendment to the US Constitution, no person may be elected US President more than twice. This is not the first time that Bannon has hinted at a third term for Trump.
Trump as an “instrument of divine will”
Asked whether circumventing the Constitution would amount to a kind of dictatorship, Bannon said: “The only way President Trump can win and stay in office in 2028 is by the will of the American people.” Trump is a “tool of the divine will” – although he is “very imperfect” and “not particularly religious.” “We have to finish what we started,” Bannon said.
“Trump 2028” caps in the Oval Office
The Trump administration – especially the president himself – repeatedly flirts with suggestions that the end of the second term does not have to mean the end of the presidency. At the end of September, Trump published a photo on his Truth Social platform of a meeting in the Oval Office with leading representatives from both parties in Congress. Two red caps with the slogan “Trump 2028” can be seen on his desk.
California’s Democratic governor, Gavin Newsom, said in late August that Trump’s people kept sending him such caps. Newsom doubts that the Republican actually wants to give up the office. “Who spends $200 million on a ballroom in their home and then moves out?” said Newsom, referring to Trump’s current construction project, which most recently involved the demolition of the East Wing of the White House. According to the latest government information, the approximately 8,000 square meter ballroom will cost around 300 million dollars (around 275 million euros).
No role in current government
Bannon, whose statements repeatedly serve right-wing extremist narratives, is one of the most influential ideologues in the Trump movement. In 2016 he played a central role in the Republican election victory. At the time, Trump made him chief strategist in the White House, but Bannon only stayed there for a few months. There was later a falling out between the two, but Bannon ultimately maintained his loyalty to the now re-elected US President. He has no office in the current government.
Because he ignored a subpoena from the committee investigating the storming of the Capitol on January 6, 2021 and refused to hand over documents, Bannon served a four-month prison sentence last year. He himself describes the allegations as politically motivated./alz/DP/nas