A third Trump term sounds crazy, until you look closely

WHEN I saw the headline "Trump 2028" in American Conservative magazine, I thought it must be an April Fool's joke.

- Sarah Baxter

It was written by Peter Tonguette, surely a made-up, tongue-in-cheek name. In fact, the author is real and his admiration for Donald Trump knows no bounds. Although he told me his article was meant to be "provocative, cheeky and punchy", we were not simply being trolled.

Tonguette argued that "if a man who was once president returns, after a series of years, to stand again for the office and proves so popular as to earn a second non-consecutive term - as Trump seems bound to do - to deny him the right to run for a second consecutive term cuts against basic fair play.

"If, by 2028, voters feel Trump has done a poor job they can pick another candidate," he added, "but if they feel he has delivered on his promises, why should they be denied the freedom to choose him once more?" Whoa! Trump has not won the 2024 election yet.

It is possible he could lose to Joe Biden again. But let's face it, Trump would love being president for life. It irks him that under the 22nd amendment of the US constitution, he is barred from serving more than two terms.

Trump flirted with the idea of staying in power before the riot at the Capitol in January 2021. While hosting Chinese president Xi Jinping at his Mar-a-Lago compound in 2019, Trump said: "He's now president for life. President for life. No, he's great.

And look, he was able to do that. I think it's great. Maybe we'll have to give that a shot someday." His admiration for Xi is mutual, by the way. This week the New York Times revealed that covert Chinese social media accounts are posing as Make America Great Again fans and stoking division in the same way that Russian troll farms did in 2016.

The Chinese "spamouflage" variously depicts Democrat Biden in a prison jumpsuit, makes jokes about his age or promotes claims that he is a Satanist and paedophile (fairly commonplace allegations among the QAnon crowd).