President Trump is doing absolutely nothing to dispel the growing rumor that he will completely disregard the Constitution to run for an illegal third presidential term.    

“Steve Bannon said in a recent interview that there would be plans for you to be able to run and potentially win a third term in 2028,” a reporter asked Trump on Air Force One on Monday. “Is that something you’d be willing to challenge in court?”

“Well, I haven’t really thought about it, we have some very good people as you know,” he replied. “But uh, I have the best poll numbers I’ve ever had.” 

After saying Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio could run for president in 2028, Trump again brought it back to himself. “I would love to do it,” he emphasized.

Asked by a reporter if he wasn’t ruling out a third term, Trump replied, “Am I not ruling it out? I mean you’ll have to tell me.”

Reporter: Bannon said there could be plans for you to be able to run and potentially win a third term Is that something you'd be willing to challenge at the court to be able to do?

Trump: I haven't really thought about it. We have some very good people as you know.. but I have… pic.twitter.com/gNnSAYsOoi

The president is wrong about the poll numbers, as they are currently some of the lowest he’s experienced. And more importantly, the president has absolutely thought about 2028—he’s already had the hats made. Steve Bannon, his former right hand, has made the actual plans abundantly clear.

“Trump is gonna be president in ’28, and people ought to just get accommodated with that,” Bannon said in an interview with The Economist published last Thursday. “There’s many different alternatives. At the appropriate time, we’ll lay out what the plan is, but there’s a plan and President Trump will be the president in ’28.” 

Trump’s complete nonanswer, combined with everything Bannon and the deep MAGA base has said about it, should raise alarm for anyone still holding onto whatever constitutional values still apply in this country. The most corrupt president in modern history is planning a constitutional coup, and it’s highly unlikely that he’ll let tradition and custom—things he’s never cared about—stop him. 

The head of CNN reportedly wants his network to tone down its coverage of President Trump destroying the White House’s East Wing as he builds his enormous ballroom.

Status reports that CNN CEO Mark Thompson told his staffers on a conference call Thursday to reduce the network’s coverage of the White House’s destruction, one day after he had paid a visit to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

The Wednesday meeting at the White House was supposedly about CNN’s upcoming streaming product and an opportunity for Trump administration officials to appear on the network, but Thompson’s words to CNN employees raise the question of whether Trump officials told him to alter the network’s coverage. Staffers at the network are suspicious, according to Status, especially considering that CNN anchor Jake Tapper has been trying to get an interview with the president.

CNN has denied the report. “This is reckless and irresponsible conjecture without any fact checking done prior to publication,” a spokesperson said in a statement to The New Republic.

The network has a historically bad relationship with Trump, with its correspondents often butting heads with the president going back to before his first term, and its parent company, Warner Bros. Discovery, is up for sale with Trump ally David Ellison among the leading suitors. During his second term as president, Trump has made no secret of his grudges against media outlets, seeking to punish them through the FCC and defamation lawsuits. Despite Thompson’s reported words during the editorial call, the outlet has still covered the destruction of the East Wing since Thursday.

Could Trump be trying to take advantage of CNN and engineer softer coverage? Is Thompson trying to save his own job in the event Ellison acquires CNN? Either way, it’s another example of the Trump administration infringing on the freedom of the press.

This story has been updated.

Senator Rand Paul is on a campaign to knock President Donald Trump off of his warpath.

During Paul’s appearance on Fox News Sunday, host Shannon Bream asked the Kentucky Republican what information he wanted the government to provide about its military strikes in the Caribbean Sea. But Paul said that a briefing wasn’t what he was after.

“A briefing’s not enough to overcome the Constitution,” Paul said. “The Constitution says that when you go to war, Congress has to vote on it. And during a war then, [there are] lower rules for engagement and people do sometimes get killed without due process.

“But the drug war, or the crime war, has typically been something we do through law enforcement. And so far they have alleged that these people are drug dealers. No one said their name, no one said their evidence,” Paul said. “So, at this point, I would call them extrajudicial killings.

“This is akin to what China does, to [what] Iran does with drug dealers; they summarily execute people without providing evidence to the public, so it’s wrong,” Paul said.

Both Iran and China have been known to secretly execute drug dealers, without providing due process. Paul, a Libertarian, has been an outspoken critic of the Trump administration’s policy on the strikes, pointing to the military’s likely illegal drones, as well as the statistical likelihood that some of its targets are mistaken.

The U.S. conducted its

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