President Donald Trump alluded once again to being elected to a third presidential term, framing it as a joke.
“Just kidding!” Trump wrote Friday night alongside an apparent AI image bearing the words “TRUMP 2028” and “MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN.” Trump poses in the foreground while a crowd of supporters dine and drink behind him. For reasons that were not immediately clear, the sky in the image is straight out of Vincent Van Gogh’s painting “The Starry Night.”
Trump has posted numerous references to a third term, including posting this exact same image last Saturday. And an hour after his “Just kidding!” post on Friday, he posted an additional “TRUMP 2028” image with no such disclaimer.
He’s also joked about it in real life.
“I’m a little bit upset, because in two and a half years you may have a different president — may,” he told the crowd at a Michigan event last month.
A third Trump term would violate the Constitution’s 22nd Amendment, which says an individual can only be elected president twice.
“If the joke is really a secret way to test the waters on how much a legally dubious theory can fly, then yes, there’s absolutely danger there,” Anoo D. Vyas, assistant professor of law at the University of Massachusetts School of Law, told HuffPost.