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steve bannon
Bannon Says Trump Will Run for an Illegal 3rd Term Because ‘He’s a Vehicle of Divine Providence’
Journalist Mehdi Hasan said Trump and his allies "plan to overturn the Constitution and democracy. They’re not hiding it. They’re bragging about it.”
Oct 24, 2025
In a frightening interview, one of President Donald Trump’s top allies said there is a “plan” for the president to remain in power after 2028, despite constitutional limits.
Speaking to a pair of interviewers at The Economist, Steve Bannon—Trump’s former chief strategist and one of the most influential voices in the MAGA movement—described a third Trump term as a divinely ordained fait accompli that people must simply accept.
“Well, he’s gonna get a third term, so Trump ’28,” Bannon said. “Trump is gonna be president in 2028, and people ought to just get accommodated with that.”
Asked about the 22nd Amendment of the US Constitution, which plainly forbids a president from serving more than two terms in office, Bannon proclaimed that “there are many different alternatives” to get around it.
“At the appropriate time, we’ll lay out what the plan is,” he said. “But there’s a plan. And President Trump will be president in ’28.”
Bannon continued: “We have to finish what we started... I know this will drive you guys crazy, but [Trump] is a vehicle of divine providence. He’s an instrument. He’s very imperfect. He’s not churchy. But he is an instrument of divine will.”
“We need him for at least one more term,” Bannon reiterated, “and he’ll get that in ’28.”
In recent days, Trump has increasingly signaled his intent to run for a third term, selling “Trump 2028” merchandise on his website and displaying it in the Oval Office during negotiations with Democrats over the government shutdown.
His recent demolition of the White House’s East Wing to build a luxury ballroom has also raised alarms that Trump increasingly views himself as its permanent resident rather than a temporary steward.
Bannon was adamant that Trump would not only serve a third term, but that his staying in office would be “by the will of the American people.”
This assumption is out of line with what polls would seem to predict: Trump’s support recently hit a new low in his second term, with just 37% of voters approving of his job performance in the latest Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll, compared to 61% who disapprove.
Bannon’s comments came days after the New York Times reported that Trump’s handpicked election officials have called for him to declare a “national emergency” ahead of the 2026 midterm election, which they say would allow him to assert more control over election laws and impose new rules on state and local elections without approval from Congress.
Max Flugrath of the voting rights group Fair Fight Action, who warned earlier this week of Trump’s plans to “hijack” the next elections, said that by pushing for a third term for the president, “Bannon is basically saying, ‘Let’s light the Constitution on fire.’”
Author and activist Jim Stewartson noted that Bannon “uses the same alchemy as [House Speaker] Mike Johnson and [Defense Secretary] Pete Hegseth to rationalize destroying the Constitution: ‘spiritual war.’”
Johnson has argued that the US government “must be biblically sanctioned” and that the Founders’ idea of the separation of church and state was “a misnomer.” Hegseth, meanwhile, has endorsed a video of a far-right pastor discussing the need to repeal the 19th Amendment, which enshrined the right of women to vote.
Some pointed out that Bannon often manages to create a stir in the media by saying provocative things and claiming to have privileged knowledge about the machinations of Trump’s inner circle. It’s not the first time Bannon has raised the possibility of a third Trump term.
“A question that I’ve never seen fully resolved is to what degree Bannon is just trying to get attention as a media figure and to what degree he’s actually clued in to what’s going on in the White House,” said HeatMap News correspondent Matthew Zeitlin.
However, Bannon was in the know about Trump’s plot to overturn the 2020 election well before it happened. Days before the vote, he was recorded telling right-wing allies that “What Trump’s gonna do is just declare victory... He’s gonna declare victory. But that doesn’t mean he’s a winner. He’s just gonna say he’s a winner.”
Others said that Bannon’s prognosis about a third Trump term is gravely serious, especially given Trump’s other actions during his second term.
“I would love to be wrong, but they keep saying this in public,” said writer John DiLillo. “He’s selling Trump 2028 merch. He’s massively remodeling the White House as if it were his personal residence. I don’t really see why the idea shouldn’t be taken seriously just because it’s ‘unconstitutional.’”
Mehdi Hasan, founder of the media outlet Zeteo, meanwhile, said: “They’re literally shouting it out loud! Their plan to overturn the Constitution and democracy. They’re not hiding it. They’re bragging about it. And the media are just ignoring it, or worse, normalizing it; the biggest story perhaps in modern American history.”
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The Ugly Aftermath of Charlie Kirk’s Assassination
A war against evil, which some voices on the right now suggest is underway, means a fight to the death. In a democracy, that’s an ominous approach to political disagreement—and Trump fosters it.
Sep 21, 2025
In the final minutes of FBI Director Kash Patel’s appearance before the Senate Judiciary Committee on September 16, Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) acknowledged the obvious: Individuals on the left should not have celebrated Charlie Kirk’s assassination, but influential voices on the right were inflaming the situation.
The bottom line, Tillis observed, was that escalation of the rhetoric on the right was making the FBI’s job of law enforcement more difficult.
Trump Disagrees
Sen. Tillis’s analysis would have come as a shock to President Donald Trump, who blamed the episode on the “radical left.” Speaking Wednesday night from the Oval office only hours after Kirk’s death on September 10—before the identity or motives of the assassin were known—he issued a video message from the Oval Office:
“My administration will find each and every one of those who contributed to this atrocity and to other political violence, including the organizations that fund it and support it, as well as those who go after our judges, law enforcement officials, and everyone else who brings order to our country.”
Listing recent attacks against himself and other conservative figures, he didn’t mention violence against Democrats, including: the assassination of a Minnesota lawmaker and her husband; the shooting of another Minnesota legislator and his wife; the arson attack on Gov. Josh Shapiro’s (D-PA) residence; or the attack on Rep. Nancy Pelosi’s (D-CA) husband. Those omissions were an important tell: Trump is going after Democrats and what he otherwise considers the left—and them only.
On Thursday, Sept. 11, he confirmed the identity of his targets: “We have a radical left group of lunatics out there, just absolute lunatics, and we're going to get that problem solved.”
And then, with an appearance the next day on Fox & Friends, Trump resumed his rant:
“I’ll tell you something that’s going to get me in trouble, but I couldn’t care less. The radicals on the right oftentimes are radical because they don’t want to see crime. They don’t want to see crime. Worried about the border. They’re saying, We don’t want these people coming in. We don’t want you burning our shopping centers. We don’t want you shooting our people in the middle of the street.”
“The radicals on the left are the problem,” Trump continued his series of non sequiturs, “and they’re vicious and they’re horrible and they’re politically savvy, although they want men and women sports, they want transgender for everyone, they want open borders.”
Meanwhile on the Right
Here’s a sample of what Sen. Tillis was talking about:
Steve Bannon on his “War Room” broadcast: “We have to have steely resolve. Charlie Kirk is a casualty of war. We are at war in this country. We are.”
Fox News host Jesse Watters: “They are at war with us, whether we want to accept it or not. What are we gonna do about it? Everybody’s accountable … the politicians, the media, and all these rats out there. This can never happen again. It ends now. This is a turning point and we know which direction we’re going.”
Podcaster Matt Walsh: “We are up against demonic forces from the pit of Hell. This is existential. A fight for our own existence and the existence of our country.”
Elon Musk: “If they won’t leave us in peace, then our choice is to fight or die.”
Conservative actor James Woods: “Dear leftists: we can have a conversation or a civil war. One more shot from your side, and you will not get this choice again.”
What’s Next?
Seeing the world through Trump’s hyperpolitical lens leaves no room for doubt, ambiguity, facts, or reasoned discussion. Everyone is either friend or foe, ally or enemy, angel or devil. War requires battling the opposition. And the opposition is anyone who opposes or criticizes Trump.
But a war against evil—which some voices on the right now suggest is underway—means a fight to the death. In a democracy, that’s an ominous approach to political disagreement. Trump fosters it.
The day after Kirk’s assassination, Sen. Tillis told the National Journal: “What I was really disgusted by yesterday is a couple of talking heads that see this as an opportunity to say we’re at war so that they could get some of our conservative followers lathered up over this. It seems like a cheap, disgusting, awful way to pretend like you’re a leader of a conservative movement.”
It’s remarkable how Republicans in Congress acquire wisdom after they have announced that they’re not seeking re-election.
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EJ Antoni, Trump's Pick for Key Economic Post, Spotted in Jan 6 MAGA Mob
"The inmates are not only running the asylum. They're bringing in more inmates to help," said one observer.
Aug 14, 2025
EJ Antoni, President Donald Trump's controversial nominee to head the Bureau of Labor Statistics, was among the insurrectionist mob that stormed the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, NBC News revealed Wednesday.
Video footage archived from the right-wing social media site Parler and posted online by a Republican-led congressional subcommittee shows Antoni among the crowd about half an hour before the MAGA mob began breaching barricades, attacking police, and swarming the Capitol. He is also seen walking away from the crowd.
The White House attempted to downplay the news, with spokesperson Taylor Rogers saying that "these pictures show E.J. Antoni, a bystander to the events of January 6th, observing and then leaving the Capitol area."
"E.J. was in town for meetings, and it is wrong and defamatory to suggest E.J. engaged in anything inappropriate or illegal," Rogers added.
See the man circled here? That's E.J. Antoni, Trump's Bureau of Labor Statistics nominee, walking through a crowd of Capitol rioters.#ICYMI, we've got an archive of 500+ Parler videos taken during Jan. 6. You can spot Antoni starting at around 1:41 here: projects.propublica.org/parler-capit...
[image or embed]
— ProPublica (@propublica.org) August 14, 2025 at 9:06 AM
Other MAGA figures also defended Antoni. Felonious fraudster Steve Bannon, who pleaded guilty in a border wall fundraising fraud case this year, said Thursday on his War Room podcast: "They came up with a photo of E.J. Antoni in the crowd outside the Capitol on January 6, and NBC went absolutely nuts over it. I think it makes E.J. even more based. I didn't know that about E.J.—makes us want him even more."
Critics, however, expressed alarm, given the important post to which Antoni was nominated.
"We just discovered a Trump [Department of Justice] official was at January 6, telling other traitors to 'kill' police," journalist and attorney Adam Cohen wrote on the social media site Bluesky, referring to Jared Wise, who was pardoned by Trump.
"Now we learn Trump's BLS nominee, E.J. Antoni—apart from being totally unqualified—was ALSO part of the insurrection," Cohen added. "The inmates are not only running the asylum. They're bringing in MORE inmates to help."
The West Virginia Federation of Democratic Women noted on the social media site X that "Trump fired the vetted woman who reported honest stats on job losses. His new guy was in the mob on January 6 and wrote Project 2025."
Journalist Ahmed Baba wrote on X: "So, E.J. Antoni is the chief economist at the Heritage Foundation, a contributor to Project 2025, and was literally outside the Capitol on January 6. This is who Trump wants to be in charge of the BLS data that shapes global decisions and moves markets—an extremist sycophant."
Trump nominated Antoni after firing former BLS Commissioner Erika McEntarfer, whom the president accused without evidence of manipulating employment statistics to discredit him and other Republicans.
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