Donald Trump triggered a fresh round of speculation about whether he intends to pursue an unconstitutional third term after he posed in the Oval Office with bright red caps embroidered “TRUMP 2028,” sharing photos of the display from a meeting with congressional leaders as Washington slid toward a shutdown. Images posted late Tuesday on his social platform showed two of the hats placed squarely on the Resolute Desk in front of Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, with the president looking on from behind the desk. The White House did not issue an explanation for the props, but the tableau immediately fueled questions Trump has stoked for months about 2028, despite the Twenty-Second Amendment’s two-term limit.
Jeffries, asked about the scene in a CNN interview, called the caps’ appearance “the strangest thing ever,” saying the hats “randomly appeared” in the middle of the meeting and underlined, in his view, a lack of seriousness as the sides attempted to avert a lapse in funding. Conservative and liberal outlets alike amplified his account, while cable news loops replayed the stills of Schumer and Jeffries seated across from Trump with the “TRUMP 2028” stitching visible in the foreground. “Randomly appeared,” Jeffries repeated, declining to speculate on who placed them there.
The episode was not an isolated tease. Earlier this year the Trump Organization’s official merchandise site began selling “Trump 2028” hats for $50, pitched with the tagline “Rewrite the rules,” and in August the president appeared in social videos flanked by the hats while showing off campaign-branded stock. The caps have surfaced at rallies and in social posts by allies, part of a merchandising push that has tracked with Trump’s public musing that there are “methods” by which he could serve again after 2028—comments that constitutional scholars have uniformly dismissed.
On Sunday, March 30, when NBC News asked directly whether he was joking about a third term, Trump replied, “I’m not joking,” adding, “There are methods which you could do it,” and sketching a scenario in which he might run as a vice-presidential candidate and later assume office. Legal experts interviewed the next day said the suggestions are foreclosed by the Constitution. “Trump may not want to rule out a third term but the 22nd Amendment to the Constitution does,” said David Schultz, a professor of constitutional law, while Michael Gerhardt of the University of North Carolina called it “completely unprecedented” and said “there is no constitutional basis for the current president to try to serve as president after two elected terms.” Hofstra’s James Sample put it more bluntly: “The 22nd Amendment, however, is black and white.”
The Twenty-Second Amendment’s language is plain: “No person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice,” with an additional provision that limits someone who served more than two years of another president’s term to a single subsequent election. It was ratified in 1951 after Franklin D. Roosevelt’s four elections. Nonpartisan resources and legal explainers have reiterated throughout the year that the bar applies in the aggregate, whether or not terms are consecutive—meaning Trump, elected in 2016 and again in 2024, is not eligible to be elected in 2028.
Some supporters have floated alternatives that experts say would still collide with constitutional guardrails. Running as a vice-presidential candidate to step up later would likely fail under the Twelfth Amendment’s requirement that a person ineligible to be president is also ineligible to be vice president. Others have speculated about statutory or procedural workarounds that scholars argue “defeat the clear intent” of the Two-Term Limit, which was designed to prevent entrenchment. “Even those who favor more literal readings interpret the text with an eye toward what the real purpose is,” one election-law scholar told CBS News, pointing to the paired operation of the Twelfth and Twenty-Second Amendments.
Trump has occasionally gestured the other way. In an August appearance he said he would “probably not” seek a third term, even as the hats remained for sale and the topic persisted in interviews and speeches. His allies in Congress have nonetheless used the chatter to energize supporters: Rep. Andy Ogles of Tennessee has proposed amending the Constitution to allow a president who did not serve two consecutive terms to run again—an initiative legal analysts and historians deem politically implausible given the supermajorities and state ratifications required for any constitutional change.
The “Trump 2028” caps on the Resolute Desk drew particular notice because they appeared during a high-stakes Oval Office meeting on funding the government. The hats were visible in multiple angles of photographs Trump posted, and conservative media described them as trolling Democratic leaders. A Fox News report said the president uploaded the images a few hours before the shutdown deadline and noted that his campaign had been selling the hats “since earlier this year,” while right-leaning and centrist outlets alike framed the placement as a pointed message about 2028 delivered in the middle of policy talks.
Reactions split along familiar lines. Supporters read the caps as cheeky provocation; critics called them a not-very-subtle signal of intent to defy norms and rules. In the same news cycle, Jeffries condemned racially caricatured AI videos Trump posted to Truth Social and said the White House behavior during the shutdown talks showed “Republicans’ unserious approach to governance.” Vice President JD Vance, asked on television about the hats, laughed and said they made Democrats “uncomfortable,” while insisting there had also been “a very good conversation” on policy.
Beyond the performance, the open legal question that most readers and viewers asked—can Trump actually run again?—has drawn consistent answers from across the legal spectrum. FactCheck.org, surveying constitutional-law professors in April, reported that touted “loopholes” are “implausible” and undercut the amendment’s clear purpose, while the National Constitution Center has reiterated that the bar is categorical as to being elected more than twice. A recent law-review preprint reviewing historical practice and the amendment’s drafting concluded that attempts to achieve a third term by indirection would be “incompatible with [the amendment’s] intent” and would likely fail in court.
Even routes that are sometimes floated as hypotheticals—such as a repeal of the amendment or a bid to serve again by way of the vice presidency—face prohibitive obstacles. Amending the Constitution would require two-thirds of both chambers of Congress or a convention called by two-thirds of states, and ratification by three-quarters of states; legal specialists told ABC that is “incredibly unlikely.” As to the vice-presidential theory, the Twelfth Amendment’s eligibility language would invite near-certain litigation the moment any ticket featuring an ineligible candidate attempted to qualify for ballots. “If an ineligible person such as Trump is permitted to run knowing that he is not eligible to serve, it is a dangerous collision course,” said elections scholar Barry Burden, adding that courts would be asked to enforce the bar long before Inauguration Day.
The hat episode also sits inside a longer-running feedback loop between Trump’s stagecraft and the mechanics of constitutional governance. In May, the Washington Post chronicled how the president toggled between saying he was joking and leaning into the idea of 2028, noting that “the reaction among his supporters has been anything but unserious.” Princeton professor Deborah Pearlstein wrote that “the 22nd Amendment flatly prevents it,” while other scholars emphasized that the “black and white” text leaves little room for creative lawyering. The spectacle of “Trump 2028” paraphernalia, however, continues to surface in rallies and official scenes, keeping the topic in the bloodstream of political talk shows and social feeds.
For opponents, the images in the Oval Office this week were a reminder of how quickly symbolic gestures can blur into perceived challenges to bedrock rules. For supporters, they were a flourish that trolled adversaries and dominated a day’s coverage on the eve of a shutdown. Either way, the question that the hats were designed to provoke—what happens in 2028?—remains anchored to a fixed constitutional answer unless the document itself is changed. As one expert told ABC, “The only way [legal] way for Trump to be able to run for a third term would be to amend the Constitution,” a path that would require political consensus that currently does not exist.
The marketplace for the message remains robust. The Trump Store’s product page for the cap advertises “Made in America” construction and “flag embroidery on the side,” with the pitch line “The future looks bright! Rewrite the rules with the Trump 2028 high crown hat.” Regional outlets have noted companion T-shirts emblazoned with the same phrase. For Jeffries and Schumer, the hats in the Oval Office were props in a budget fight; for Trump’s campaign and company, they are a revenue stream; and for constitutional lawyers, they are an occasion to restate the boundaries that govern presidential tenure.
If the political theater continues, disputes over eligibility could move from social media into administrative and judicial forums. As FactCheck.org and ABC have both outlined, election officials in individual states would likely face challenges to certify an ineligible candidate, and any attempt to place an ineligible name on a ballot would trigger litigation that could reach the Supreme Court. In the 2024 cycle, the justices asserted decisive authority over ballot-access challenges under a different constitutional provision, a reminder that ultimate answers in election law disputes seldom rest with political rhetoric. For now, what is undisputed is the text of the Twenty-Second Amendment and the historic practice behind it. The caps may ask a provocative question, but the Constitution, as written, supplies the answer.
Trump’s advisers have sometimes treated the 2028 talk as a form of political provocation—something that occupies opponents while galvanizing the base, much like the hats themselves. Whether the tactic remains a sideshow or evolves into a legal test will depend on choices yet to be made by the president and his party as 2028 approaches. On Tuesday night, though, the image in the Oval Office required no interpretation: a president seated behind the Resolute Desk, two red caps on the leather blotter bearing the promise of a year the Constitution does not permit him to pursue.
