Why MAGA’s 'third Trump term' fantasies could doom GOP in 2028

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U.S. President Donald Trump gestures, aboard the aircraft carrier USS George Washington, during a visit to U.S. Navy's Yokosuka base in Yokosuka, Japan, October 28, 2025. REUTERS/Evelyn Hockstein

In 1944, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt did something that no U.S. president has done since: He won a fourth term. But all of the presidents who followed FDR served only one or two terms, as the U.S. Constitution's 22nd Amendment — which was fully ratified in 1951 — mandates term limits for presidents, and two terms is the maximum allowed.

But far-right MAGA Republican Steve Bannon, host of the "War Room" podcast and former White House chief strategist in the first Trump administration, is claiming that there is a way around the 22nd Amendment and that Trump is, in fact, eligible for a third term. And Trump, in interviews, brags that he deserves to stay in the White House after the 2028 election.

In an article published on October 28, however, New York Magazine's Ed Kilgore argues that talk of a third Trump presidency could backfire on the Republican Party and the MAGA movement.

"MAGA chatter about an unconstitutional third term for Donald Trump is back — because it never goes away," Kilgore observes. "He could make it disappear with a few definitive sentences. Occasionally, he breaks character and shows he knows it ain't happening, but there's always an asterisk…. . In any event, he clearly wants to keep alive the speculation that, just as he managed an extremely improbable comeback in 2024, he might find a way to stick around beyond 2028, despite the fact that he will be older than Joe Biden was in 2024 and despite, you know, the 22nd Amendment to the U.S. Constitution."

One of the MAGA Republicans who is hurt the most by talk of a third Trump term, according to Kilgore, is Vice President JD Vance — who is often mentioned as possible 2028 presidential candidate.

"Before long, there could be a Trump third term bubble large enough to blot out the sky," Kilgore explains. "When it inevitably bursts — as it will unless Trump seriously considers a military coup and an actual, undisguised fascist dictatorship — MAGA folk will be very disappointed and may be less than enthused about being offered the booby prize of JD Vance. The Ohioan might be fine as a momentary placeholder, but as the leader of the Free World and inheritor of the MAGA movement? Vance might be the worst of both worlds for the GOP: someone who doesn't excite the party's feral base but does terrify Democrats as an authentic authoritarian more interested in crushing the opposition forever than in sorting through bribes and turning the White House into a gaudy and gilded monument to himself."

Kilgore adds, "If Trump does want to sell Vance to his party and to the general electorate, he will need to get out of the way. That could be one problem Trump really can't 'fix.'"

Read Ed Kilgore's full article for New York Magazine at this link (subscription required).

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