Donald Trump hinted at extending his stay in the White House to a third term if he wins in November.
Speaking to a crowd at the National Rifle Association (NRA) annual meeting in Dallas on Saturday, he said: “You know, FDR 16 years — almost 16 years — he was four terms. I don’t know, are we going to be considered three-term? Or two-term?”
It was the former president’s ninth time addressing the US’s top gun lobby, which contains some of Trump’s most fervent supporters and donors.
It isn’t the first time Trump has hinted at going for a third term.
On the campaign trail in 2020, he told a rally in Oshkosh, Wisconsin: “We are going to win four more years. And then after that, we’ll go for another four years because they spied on my campaign. We should get a redo of four years.”
But last month, in an interview with Time magazine. he seemed to dial back on his desire for a third term.
“I intend to serve four years and do a great job. And I want to bring our country back. I want to put it back on the right track. Our country is going down. We’re a failing nation right now. We’re a nation in turmoil,” he said.
Trump also used the event on Saturday to slam President Joe Biden for increasing restrictions on gun ownership, promising the crowd that he would reverse any gun safety provisions that Biden had implemented, per Politico.
“Crooked Joe Biden has a 40-year record of trying to rip firearms out of the hands of law-abiding citizens,” he said.
The speech ended with a pessimistic monologue from Trump set against dramatic music.
“Now we are a nation in decline,” Trump said. “We are a failing nation. We are a nation that has the highest inflation in 58 years, where banks are collapsing, and interest rates are skyrocketing.”
“We are a nation that is begging Venezuela and others for oil,” he went on. “We are a nation whose leaders are demanding all-electric cars, despite the fact that they don’t go far…”
The music was compared to the QAnon anthem — the conspiracy-theory-led movement that baselessly claims Trump is fighting a deep-state cabal of pedophiles.
Trump has leant hard into his support of QAnon in recent years.
The New York Times reported in September 2022 that music sounding like a QAnon song had been played at a Trump rally in Youngstown, Ohio. During the rally, the former president’s supporters were also seen pointing their fingers to the sky in a one-finger salute, which experts said might have been a nod to the movement’s slogan, “Where we go one, we go all.”
