Donald Trump mugshot: Ex-president joins list of history’s most famous alongside OJ Simpson and Hugh Grant
Donald Trump’s scowling mugshot will rank among the most famous of all time.
The former president joins celebrities like OJ Simpson, Khloe Kardashian, Hugh Grant and other famous faces who have had their picture taken by the authorities after run-ins with the law.
While in the UK mugshots are only released when a defendant is convicted, in the US they are published as soon as someone is “booked” – or formally indicted.
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Former President Donald Trump’s mugshot
If a fugitive is on the run, however, police make an exception to the rule in a bid to bring them to justice.
Here Sky News looks at some of the most memorable police portraits, from celebrities and crime bosses to dictators.
Justin Bieber
Bieber was stopped by police in Miami, Florida in 2014 for drag racing in a yellow Lamborghini with his friend, the singer Khalil, who was driving a red Ferrari.
He was arrested for driving under the influence of alcohol, marijuana and prescription drugs, as well as resisting arrest.
The then 19-year-old was driving “anywhere up to 55 to 60mph” in a 30mph zone, according to Miami Beach police chief Raymond Martinez. Mr Martinez said that he was a “little belligerent, using some choice words”.
Reports claimed he asked: “Why the f*** are you doing this?” and “What the f*** did I do? Why did you stop me? I ain’t got no f****** weapons.”
He was detained at 4.09am and his bail was set at $2,500 (£1,987). Eventually, he pleaded guilty to the lesser charges of driving without due care and attention and resisting arrest without violence.
OJ Simpson
Pic: AP
The former NFL star’s dramatic arrest and trial for the alleged murders of his ex-wife Nicole Brown and her friend Ron Goldman are among the most memorable moments in US TV history.
When the pair were found stabbed to death outside Ms Brown’s home in the Brentwood area of Los Angeles, Simpson was an immediate person of interest, having been accused of domestic violence a few years before.
He agreed, with his lawyers, to turn himself in five days after the deaths – by 11am on 17 June 1994 – but failed to do so.
Instead, he was chased by police in a white Ford Bronco, which was driven by his former teammate and friend Al Cowlings. Cowlings claimed he was threatening to shoot himself in the head with a pistol unless he was taken home.
Helicopter footage of the chase was broadcast live on TV to around 95 million people – many of whom had been watching the NBA basketball finals until scheduling was interrupted.
In 1995, he was found not guilty of both murders following the ‘trial of the century’, which was broadcast for TV.
This is one of several mugshots of Simpson.
He was convicted again in 2008, this time for robbery and kidnap, as part of a dispute over some of his sporting memorabilia at a Las Vegas casino hotel.
He served nine years in a Nevada prison and was released on parole in 2017.
Hugh Grant
Grant described his 1995 arrest for “lewd conduct in a public place” in Los Angeles as an “abominable thing” and a “moment of insanity”.
It came while he was in the US promoting the film Nine Months. On 27 June he was driving down Hollywood’s Sunset Strip when he decided to pick up a sex worker.
Divine Brown, real name Estella Marie Thompson, then performed oral sex on him inside the car in a nearby street, where the pair were picked up by police.
Grant, who had shot to fame for his lead role in Four Weddings and a Funeral, looked sheepish and embarrassed in his mugshot.
He was in a long-term relationship with fellow actor and model Liz Hurley, who said she “felt like she’d been shot” when she heard the news.
In a statement, Grant said: “Last night I did something completely insane. I have hurt people I love and embarrassed people I work with. For both things I am more sorry than I can ever possibly say.”
He did not attend his sentencing but was ordered to pay a fine of $1,000 (£795) and go on an AIDS education programme in his absence.
Brown, who had violated her probation for previous prostitution charges, was given a suspended 180-day prison sentence.
She was reportedly paid $100,000 (£79,500) by the now-defunct News of the World for her story, which saw her claim that Grant had told her: “I always wanted to sleep with a black woman. That’s my fantasy.”
Paris Hilton
Seven years after she first shot to notoriety for her leaked sex tape ‘A Night in Paris’, Hilton was arrested for suspected cocaine possession.
The then 29-year-old socialite was detained after a small amount of the drug fell out of her handbag at the Wynn Las Vegas Hotel in Nevada.
She told arresting officers the rolling papers, cash, credit cards and prescription asthma medication that also fell out were hers – but the cocaine belonged to an unidentified friend.
According to Las Vegas police lieutenant Dennis Flynn’s report, she claimed she thought the drug was gum.
She pleaded guilty to two misdemeanour charges of drug possession and obstructing a police officer and was sentenced to a year’s probation, 200 hours of community service and an intensive substance abuse programme.
Hilton, who had already been jailed for 45 days for driving under the influence and alcohol, and tried for marijuana possession, said she was embarrassed to have been photographed by so many people from inside the police car.
Khloe Kardashian
Pic: Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department
Kardashian was first arrested in Los Angeles in 2007 after she was pulled over by police, breathalysed and found to be over the legal alcohol limit.
She was ordered to carry out community service and attend an alcohol education course.
While she managed to attend some sessions, she skipped a few due to her busy work schedule.
The parole violation saw her hand herself in to the Los Angeles County jail the following year.
Before she surrendered, her mother Kris Jenner was famously captured scolding her sister Kim on their reality TV show Keeping Up With The Kardashians, saying: “Kim, would you stop taking pictures of yourself, your sister is going to jail.”
She was sentenced to 30 days in jail but only served 30 hours due to overcrowding at the facility.
The reality TV star was also ordered to complete another alcohol treatment plan.
Lindsay Lohan
In the years after she shot to fame for her leading roles in Mean Girls and Freaky Friday, Lohan was arrested and jailed several times.
In 2007 she pleaded guilty to a misdemeanour of cocaine use and driving under the influence and was sentenced to a day in prison – but only served just over an hour.
A warrant was put out for her arrest in 2010 after she failed to appear in court for a driving under the influence (DUI) progress hearing.
Just a few months later she was sentenced to 90 days in jail for missing court-ordered counselling sessions – but only served two weeks due to prison overcrowding.
She spent another day behind bars after failing a drugs test in September 2010.
Another jail spell came in 2011 after she pleaded no contest to stealing a necklace.
Although she was arrested for an alleged assault in New York in 2012 she was never prosecuted.
Her final run-in with the law enforcement came in March 2013, which ended in her spending time in rehab having pleaded no contest to reckless driving and lying to police after she crashed her car.
In 2015 her probation ended and she was finally free of court orders for the first time in eight years. Since then she has stayed out of trouble and restarted her acting career.
‘Hot Felon’ Jeremy Meeks
Meeks shot to internet fame in 2014 after police released his mugshot online.
Convictions for robbery and assaulting a 16-year-old boy meant he had already spent time in prison, where he was recruited by the North Side Gangster Crips.
But when he was arrested in 2014 in a California gang sweep known as Operation Ceasefire, Stockton Police published his mugshot on their Facebook page, which quickly racked up thousands of likes and earned him the nickname ‘Hot Felon’.
While behind bars for firearm possession and grand theft at the Mendota Federal Correctional Institution, he caught the attention of various modelling agencies.
On his release in 2016, he was signed and began a career in fashion modelling.
He entered a relationship with Topshop heiress Chloe Green, with whom he is now believed to have a child.
Meeks also has a child with his ex-wife Melissa Meeks, who he was married to between 2008 and 2018.
Frank Sinatra
Sinatra was arrested in his hometown of Hoboken, New Jersey on the charge of “seduction” in 1938.
According to the FBI report: “He did then and there have sexual intercourse with the complainant, who was then and there a single female of good repute.”
He was released on bail for $1,500 (£1,192) but re-arrested a month later when police discovered the woman was married.
Sinatra was also one year into his marriage to his first wife Nancy Barbato.
The second charge of adultery was eventually dropped, with the singer only spending a few hours in jail.
Al Capone
Pic: AP
One of the most notorious gangsters in US history, Al Capone began his criminal career as a teenager after becoming a member of the Five Points Gang.
He got the nickname Scarface following an altercation with his young rival Frank Gallucio over comments he made about his sister. While he was left with a cut on his left cheek, Gallucio’s actions ultimately saw Capone shoot him dead.
While still in New York, he became a bouncer for various organised crime premises but moved to Chicago to become joint boss of the Chicago Outfit, which illegally supplied alcohol during the Prohibition era.
He spent seven years as head of the syndicate before his intense conflict with the rival North Side Gang left police determined to put him in jail.
Eventually, he was charged with 22 counts of tax evasion and was convicted on five of them in 1931.
He was sentenced to 11 years in a federal prison but was released after eight having showed signs of neurosyphilis. He suffered a stroke and died of a heart attack at the age of 48 in 1947.
Joseph Stalin
Like his predecessor Vladimir Lenin, Russian dictator Joseph Stalin was arrested several times in his younger days and forced into internal exile in Siberia.
Tsarist authorities would repeatedly throw him in prison and banish him from places like Moscow and St Petersburg in a bid to hold onto power – but he often escaped via Baku, Azerbaijan, to return to his ‘illegal work’.
Stalin was exiled to Siberia for the final time in 1913 and remained there until the Russian revolution and the end of the empire in 1917.
This mugshot comes from 1911 – when he was in his early 30s.
During his time as leader of the USSR – from 1924 until his death in 1953 – he oversaw the execution of more than a million of his own citizens.
War crime trials of various Baltic leaders in the 1990s and early 2000s led to the prosecution of some Russian leaders for the crimes they committed during and after the Second World War. Most cases were carried out in their absence.
Vladimir Putin recognises the “horrors of Stalinism” but claims he has been “excessively demonised” by Russia’s enemies.
Bill Gates
Gates was arrested for the first time in 1975 for being caught speeding and driving without a licence in Albuquerque, New Mexico.
But his famous mugshot comes from his second arrest two years later.
On 13 December 1977 police pulled him over for failing to stop at a stop sign and driving without a licence again.
The following year he got three speeding fines for going too fast in his Porsche 911.
Gates co-founded Microsoft in 1975, eventually becoming the richest person on Earth – according to Forbes – between 1995 and 2017 – when he was overtaken by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos.
Mick Jagger
Jagger was arrested with his Rolling Stones bandmate Keith Richards at Richards’ Sussex countryside cottage in February 1967.
At the time, police were keen to crack down on celebrities taking drugs and began campaigns against various bands including the Stones, The Who and Cream.
Tabloid newspapers, such as the now-defunct News of the World, teamed up with Scotland Yard to help apprehend certain stars.
Jagger was in the process of suing the paper for libel over stories they published about him and his then girlfriend Marianne Faithful, when they swooped on Richards’ home.
After raiding the Redlands estate in Sussex, they arrested Richards for cannabis possession and Jagger for Amphetamines.
They were both convicted and spent a night in prison – but had the charges overturned on appeal.
After their names were cleared, there was widespread condemnation of the police for deciding to prosecute them in the first place.
David Bowie
Like Jagger, Bowie’s police mugshot was stylish. Also like him, he was arrested on drugs charges – but in the US and for marijuana possession.
The arrest happened in Rochester, New York State, in the early hours of 21 May 1976 after a performance at the city’s community war memorial.
Police officers raided his and Iggy Pop’s hotel room and found around 170g of marijuana.
They were taken in with two others, held for three hours and released on bail for $2,000 (£1,500).
Both Bowie and Iggy Pop pleaded not guilty but the charges were eventually dropped after a grand jury decided not to indict them.
Wayne Rooney
Rooney has been arrested on both sides of the Atlantic, first for public intoxication at the airport in Washington DC while he was playing in the States for DC United in 2018.
According to the Loudoun County Sheriff’s Office: “He was booked into the Loudoun County Adult Detention Centre on December 16 2018, on a charge of public intoxication stemming from an arrest by the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority Police (MWAA).
“He was later released on a personal recognizance bond.”
He was due to appear in court on 24 January – but avoided it with a $25 (£20) fine and paying $91 (£72) in court costs.
He was arrested for being three times over the legal drink-drive limit in Wilmslow, Cheshire the year before.
The former Manchester United star admitted “letting his family down” after being caught at the wheel of another woman’s Volkswagen Beetle at 2am on 1 September 2017.
He appeared at Stockport Magistrates Court and was fined the equivalent of two weeks’ salary – then £320,000 at Everton – and banned from driving for two years.
50 Cent
Before his hip-hop career, Curtis Jackson, now known as 50 Cent, was a drug dealer in his native Queens, New York City.
Having started out aged just 12, he was arrested for direct sale of a controlled substance after he was caught trying to sell four vials of crack cocaine to an undercover police officer in June 1994.
Weeks later, in August, police raided his home to find heroin, crack cocaine and a starter pistol.
He was sentenced to between three and nine years in prison, but as his offences were non-violent, he had the option to undergo the SHOCK programme instead.
The military-style boot camp for first-time offenders saw him out in just six months.
Soon after he was introduced to hip-hop executives – and the rest became music history.
US
‘You can start with me’: Commander of NASA flight that was stranded in space for more than nine months says he is partly to blame
One of the astronauts who was stranded on the International Space Station (ISS) has said some of the blame for what went wrong lies with him.
Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams splashed down off the coast of Florida earlier this month after more than nine months onboard the ISS.
The two astronauts docked at the ISS on 5 June last year, expecting to be there for just eight days.
Instead, issues with Boeing’s long-awaited Starliner meant NASA decided to leave them waiting in orbit for months.
Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore. Pics: NASA
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Splashdown! Butch and Suni’s space saga is over
Wilmore: ‘Start with me’ for blame
Mr Wilmore was asked at a NASA news conference on Monday evening where he lays the blame for the issues with Starliner, to which he said, “I’ll start with me”.
“There were issues, of course, with what happened with Starliner,” he added. “There were some issues, of course, that happened that prevented us from returning on Starliner.
“And I’ll start with me because there were questions that, as the commander of the spacecraft that I should have asked. And I did not, I didn’t know I needed to…
“Blame, that’s a term – I don’t like that term – certainly there’s responsibility throughout all the programmes, and certainly you can start with me.”
He then added that responsibility for the issues with returning home can be found “all throughout the chain”, including with NASA and Boeing.
Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams. Pic: NASA Johnson
Williams: ‘Life goes on up there’
Ms Williams also said she was somewhat surprised by the interest in their prolonged space mission.
“Life goes on up there. I mentioned today that we pivoted and became [ISS] crew members,” she said. “You maybe sort of get tunnel visioned into doing your job.
“We were just really focused on what we were doing… ‘the world doesn’t revolve around us but we revolve around it’.”
Ms Williams then said: “I don’t think we were aware to the degree [people were interested], pretty honoured and humbled by the fact of when we came home, it was like ‘wow there are a lot of people’.”
During their long wait in space, the two US navy veterans completed spacewalks, experiments and even helped sort out the plumbing onboard the ISS.
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Stuck astronaut takes first spacewalk
Sky’s science and technology editor Tom Clarke asked the astronauts if the politics around their stay in the ISS made a difficult situation worse. Nick Hague – who also was onboard the Crew-9 flight – disagreed.
After explaining the timeline from the launch of SpaceX’s Falcon 9 to the return of the two astronauts, he said: “That was never in question the entire time.
“The politics don’t make it up there when we’re making operational decisions. There were a lot of options that were discussed, and the team on the ground… is gigantic, and everyone was working with a singular focus.”
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Nick Hague (left) said political changes in the US did not effect the mission. Pic: NASA
Astronauts more guarded answers show NASA giving politics a wide berth
The life of an astronaut is all about preparation.
And as Butch and Suni faced questions for the first back on Earth time about how their “stranding” in space was treated like an orbital political football – that really shone through.
The astronauts looked healthy and relaxed, despite having spent 35 times longer in space than they had expected to.
They were happy to answer questions about their safe return, the effects of their extended stay in space on their bodies.
But when it came to politics, the answers were much more guarded.
When I asked them about whether politics had made their difficult situation worse, it was quickly picked up, not by the pair themselves, but by astronaut Nick Hague, their mission commander for the ride back to Earth.
“The politics don’t make it up there when we’re making operational decisions,” he said.
“There were a lot of options discussed by the ground team, and everyone worked with singular focus on how do we end the Crew 9 mission at the right time and maintain the safety and the success of the space station mission.”
Their reluctance to address the political questions around the mission is understandable.
They have returned to a NASA bracing itself, like many federally funded organisations, for possible budget cuts and the mercurial decision-making of Donald Trump and his close ally Elon Musk.
Both men had suggested it was a political decision by the previous administration not to return them to Earth sooner.
Painting their already scheduled return as a “rescue mission” – despite presenting no evidence of the claim it put NASA in an embarrassing position.
It has been maintained all along that the plan was for the pair to return to Earth with the next rotation of the space station crew. Which is what subsequently happened.
But in the current political climate, and still awaiting the confirmation of a new leader for NASA’s administration, it’s giving politics a wide berth.
The crew were also asked about how weird it was to return to Earth in the SpaceX capsule – and about the welcome party of dolphins that swam around the vessel after splashdown.
“I can tell you that returning from space to Earth through the atmosphere inside of a 3000-degree fireball of plasma is weird, regardless of how you look at it,” Mr Wilmore said.
“It’s thrilling, it’s amazing, I remember thinking about the structure of the capsule,” as the Dragon Freedom capsule descended at pace toward our planet.
“And then the parachutes open and… it’s exhilarating.”
Mr Hague then remarked, “I had requested dolphins as kind of a joke”.
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Dolphins greet returning astronauts
The president of Finland says Donald Trump is running out of patience with Vladimir Putin and is frustrated with him.
The Finnish leader spoke to Sky News after spending the day with the US president and playing golf with him.
Alexander Stubb said Donald Trump is “the only person who can broker a peace, a ceasefire, because he’s the only one that Putin is afraid of” – but is tiring of the Russian leader’s tactics.
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Donald Trump played golf with Alexander Stubb at Mar-a-Lago, in Palm Beach, Florida. Pic: Finnish Presidential Office/Reuters
“There was a combination of impatience and a tad of frustration,” he said during their match in Florida over the weekend – and it wasn’t with his golf swing.
“We were talking a lot about the ceasefire and the frustrations he had that Russia was not committing to it.”
Mr Stubb’s comments confirm reports of a change in attitude by Mr Trump over the Russian leader.
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Trump ‘disappointed’ in Putin
He has until recently seemed more than happy to give Putin the benefit of the doubt, applying enormous pressure on Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy instead.
Putin’s refusal to accept a 30-day ceasefire though is changing that, according to the Finnish leader.
He said: “If there was a pendulum of trust and distrust, certainly Russian activity in the past few weeks has proven that we’re moving more towards the distrust side of things.”
Mr Stubb is urging the imposition of colossal sanctions on Russia if it does not accept the ceasefire by a deadline that he says should be set for Easter.
The US is considering sanctions on Russian oil, he said. “Oil, oil prices, serious caps on oil.”
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Republican senator Lindsey Graham, who also played golf with Mr Stubb on Saturday, is proposing what he has called “bone breaking sanctions” if it does not comply with ceasefire demands.
Sanctions failed to deter Russia from invading Ukraine in the first place or reverse its invasion since.
But Mr Stubb insists Russia’s economic pain is now reaching a critical point and sanctions could tip it over the brink.
He said: “You never underestimate the capacity of Russians to live through discomfort. I mean that’s what the Soviet Union was really about. But at the same time, there has to be a wall at some stage. And I think that wall is approaching.”
Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin in Vietnam in 2017. File pic: AP
If Donald Trump is losing patience with Russia, is he prepared to do anything about it?
“I think we need a colossal amount of sanctions on 20 April if the Russians don’t abide by the ceasefire,” said Mr Stubb.
But is Donald Trump’s Finnish golfing partner confident he is going to apply that pressure?
“Fairly confident,’ he said. “More confident than hopeful.”
It may take more than that to persuade Putin there is something to really worry about.
Donald Trump is one of two presidents to serve two non-consecutive terms, second only to Grover Cleveland, who did it in the 1800s.
But Mr Trump has made comments hinting at a third term in office.
An amendment to the Constitution, which is the supreme law of the United States, prohibits anyone from serving for more than two terms.
But what has the president said, how likely is he to pursue a third term in 2028 – and is it even possible?
Has a third term been done before?
Franklin Roosevelt served as US president four times from 1933 to 1945, because there was nothing in the original US Constitution that limited how many terms a president could serve.
But later the 22nd amendment limited presidents to two four-year terms, irrespective of whether they were served consecutively or not.
Franklin Roosevelt during his third term as president in 1942. Pic: AP
Congress passed the 22nd amendment two years after Roosevelt’s death and it took effect from the 1952 election.
No one has been able to serve more than two terms since.
The amendment states “no person shall be elected to the office of the president more than twice”.
What has Trump said?
The president made his most direct comments yet about seeking a third term in an interview with Sky News’ US partner NBC News on Sunday 30 March.
When asked about the possibility, he said: “A lot of people want me to do it. But, I mean, I basically tell them we have a long way to go, you know, it’s very early in the administration.
“I’m focused on the current,” he added.
When asked whether he wanted another term, the president responded, “I like working.”
“I’m not joking,” Mr Trump said, when asked to clarify. “But I’m not – it is far too early to think about it.”
When asked whether he has been presented with plans to allow him to seek a third term, Mr Trump said, there are “methods which you could do it”.
NBC News asked about a possible scenario in which vice president JD Vance would run for office and then pass the role to Mr Trump. Mr Trump responded that “that’s one” method.
“But there are others, too,” he added.
Asked to share another method, he simply responded “no.”
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James and Ronna discuss whether JD Vance could make a future US president.
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Some of Mr Trump’s allies have been vocal in their support for him pursuing a third term.
Steve Bannon, a former Trump strategist who runs the right-wing War Room podcast, called for the president to run again during a speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference last month, adding in a later interview with News Nation that he believed the president would “run and win again in 2028”.
Republican congressman Andy Ogles crafted a resolution calling for the extension of presidential term limits, which would allow Trump to seek another term in office.
Could Trump do it if he wanted to?
It would be “virtually impossible”, retired Commonwealth Court judge Joseph Cosgrove tells Sky News.
He would have to amend the Constitution to do it, which Mr Cosgrove says is an “arduous task”.
“The usual method requires two-thirds of both the House and Senate to propose an amendment, which would then require three-fourths of the states to approve,” he explains.
“Given the extremely close political divisions in the United States, neither of these events is foreseeable. Even if the Republicans control both the House and Senate, their majority will be so slim that no revision of the 22nd amendment could ever occur in this climate.”
Mr Fortier, who agreed with Mr Cosgrove’s points, says some legal scholars have suggested there are loopholes that could be exploited to get around the two-term limit.
“They argue that the 22nd amendment prohibits someone from running for a third term [but] not from serving a third term,” he says.
“And by an ingenious trick, a term-limited president could be elected to the vice presidency or placed in the line of succession and then ascend to the presidency when those ahead of him in the line of succession resign.”
This is the method Mr Trump alluded to, in which Mr Vance would be elected president in 2028 with Mr Trump as his vice president, before switching positions.
Mr Fortier says that this theory, however, ignores a number of other amendments and other constitutional laws which indicate that a vice president or someone else in the line of succession “must meet the qualifications to become president”.
And Mr Trump, or someone else who has already served two terms as president, would not meet that criteria thanks to the 22nd amendment.
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Additionally, Derek Muller, a professor of election law at Notre Dame, notes the 12th amendment, which was ratified in 1804, says “no person constitutionally ineligible to the office of president shall be eligible to that of vice-president of the United States.”
This means that because Mr Trump is not able to be president in 2028, he also cannot be vice president, Prof Muller explains.
“I don’t think there’s any ‘one weird trick’ to getting around presidential term limits,” he continues, adding that pursuing a third term would require extraordinary acceptance by federal and state officials, not to mention the courts and voters themselves.
He suggested Mr Trump is talking about a third term for political reasons to “show as much strength as possible” rather than with the intention of running again.
“A lame-duck president like Donald Trump has every incentive in the world to make it seem like he’s not a lame duck,” he said.
Democratic congressman Daniel Goldman, who served as lead counsel for Mr Trump’s first impeachment, said in a statement: “This is yet another escalation in his clear effort to take over the government and dismantle our democracy.
“If Congressional Republicans believe in the Constitution, they will go on the record opposing Trump’s ambitions for a third term.”
What has the president said in the past?
It was in the lead-up to the 2020 election, which Mr Trump lost to Joe Biden, that he first started hinting at seeking a third term.
At a rally in August 2020, he told supporters he would win the next election and then possibly “go for another four years” because “they spied on my campaign”, an apparent nod to his unsubstantiated claims that Barack Obama had his “wires tapped” before he was elected in 2016.
According to Forbes, Mr Trump told another rally that if he were to win the 2020 election, he would “negotiate” a third term, adding he was “probably entitled to another four [years] after that” based on “the way we were treated”.
But in an interview in 2023 with NBC News, Mr Trump was asked if there was any scenario in which he would seek a third term should he win the presidency next year, to which he responded: “No.”
And in April 2024 he told Time magazine he “wouldn’t be in favour” of an extended term – but two vague comments he made in speeches last year stoked rumours he could try it.
One was during a National Rifle Association speech, when he asked supporters if he would be considered “three-term or two-term” – though this appeared to be in reference to his unsubstantiated claims that he should have won the 2020 election but that it was rigged against him.
Another came in July, when he told attendees at a conservative Christian event they wouldn’t “have to vote anymore” if he won the 2024 election, according to CBS News.
After repeatedly telling them to vote “just this time”, he added: “In four years, you don’t have to vote again. We’ll have it fixed so good, you’re not going to have to vote.”
John Fortier, senior research fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, says the comments from the Christian event have been taken out of context, and that Mr Trump was simply trying to “encourage the sometimes reluctant Christian community to vote in this election”.
“Trump in office would be able to address their concerns so much so that it would not matter if they chose to vote in future elections,” he explains.
“It was not an indication that Trump would cancel future elections or try to serve beyond his second term.”
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