Steve Bannon Just Assured People That Trump Has A 'Plan' To Stay In Office In 2028 In Alarming New Interview

Former White House counselor-turned-far-right influencer Steve Bannon was criticized after revealing that President Donald Trump has a "plan" to get a third term as president, an action that would violate constitutional norms.

The 22nd Amendment of the U.S. Constitution clearly states that “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.”

But Bannon is pretty sure that the rule can be broken, saying the following during an interview on The Economist podcast:

“Trump is gonna be president in '28, and people just sort of [need to] get accommodated with that. There’s many different alternatives. At the appropriate time, we’ll lay out what the plan is, but there’s a plan. We will define all those terms."

He also referred to Trump as "an instrument of divine will" and "a vehicle of divine providence," suggesting that God meant for Trump to have another term, remarking:

“He's not perfect. He's not churchy, not particularly religious, but he's an instrument of divine will. And you could tell this by how he's been able to pull this off. We need him for at least one more term, right? And he'll get that in 2028.”

“We had longer odds in 2016 and longer odds in 2024 than we've got in 2028. We have to finish what we started.”

Bannon pushed back when asked whether a third term for Trump would be "undermining the spirit" of the 22nd Amendment:

"If the American people, with the mechanisms we have, put Trump back in office, are the American people tearing up the Constitution?"

He also denied that giving Trump a third term would turn the U.S. into a quasi-dictatorship, insisting—despite previously saying that there is "a plan" to circumvent constitutional norms—that he will have won a third term with the support of the American people:

"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."

You can hear what he said in the video below.

People have widely condemned Bannon's remarks.

Trump has previously suggested he might try to stay in office indefinitely.

During a November meeting with House Republicans, he hinted that he might seek their support in attempting to bypass the Constitution to run for a third term in the future—a remark that drew laughter from the supportive audience.

He said:

“I suspect I won’t be running again unless you say, ‘He’s so good we’ve got to figure something else out.'"

Three days after Trump was sworn in for his second term, Representative Andy Ogles of Tennessee introduced a constitutional amendment to allow presidents to run for a third term, something that is currently prohibited by the Constitution.

While the Constitution prevents him from seeking a third term, Trump, at the start of his second week back in office, once again suggested that presidential term limits might be open to negotiation while addressing House Republicans at their annual retreat in Florida.

At the time, he said:

“I’ve raised a lot of money for the next race that I assume I can’t use for myself, but I’m not 100 percent sure because I don’t know. I think I’m not allowed to run again. I’m not sure. Am I allowed to run again?”

Since then, he has repeatedly floated the idea; the New York Times noted that in public, Trump "couches the notion of staying in office beyond two terms as a humorous aside." But in private, he has told advisers that it’s just one of many tactics he uses to capture attention and provoke Democrats, according to people familiar with his comments.