Recently, President Donald Trump hosted an official public launch of his re-election campaign at a rally in Orlando, Florida — but according to his personal Twitter feed this Friday afternoon, his thoughts are with the future beyond the 2020 presidential election and into 2024 and beyond. He tweeted an edited video made to look like he’s essentially campaigning for eternity, with versions of his campaign yard signs popping up one after the other through 2048 (the seventh election out from the one set to take place next year) all the way into outlandishly large numbers before ending with the sign text: “Trump 4eva.”
Check it out:
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 21, 2019
Trump offered no caption and it’s not immediately clear who made the video, although the quality and Trump’s history on social media suggests it’s from a supporter and not his team.
Trump has “joked” about serving beyond the Constitutionally-mandated limit of two terms before. Just last Sunday on Twitter, he suggested he thinks it’s possible “the people would demand that I stay longer,” and before that, he’s engaged repeatedly in similar rhetoric. At a campaign rally in May, he quipped that he could serve as many as five terms.
In the face of this and other egomaniacal rhetoric from the president, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) has been reported to be concerned that Trump won’t actually cede power if he loses the 2020 election, which would no doubt plunge the United States into chaos on the level of that currently unfolding in Venezuela, where leadership is contested and there have been massive sometimes violent scuffles in the streets. Trump himself offered a sort of precursor to this possible outcome with his rhetoric prior to the 2016 election about the race supposedly being rigged against him, which set him up to potentially contest the results if Hillary Clinton won, although we all know what route that situation took.
Trump seems at present most likely to face former Vice President Joe Biden as his Democratic challenger in the 2020 general election, although there are other leading candidates like Sens. Bernie Sanders (Vt.), Elizabeth Warren (Mass.), and Kamala Harris (Calif.) as well. All have at times polled very well against Trump in hypothetical general election match-ups.
Check out Twitter’s response to Trump’s new unsettling post below. Some of his followers seem to think it’s funny to “joke” about essentially upending American democracy for good.
Featured Image via screenshot
