Trump Aide Makes Dark Joke About Abolishing Presidential Term Limits

It feels like the first eight months of Trump 2.0 have lasted a lifetime—and if deputy White House chief of staff Dan Scavino has his way, maybe they will.

On Thursday, El Salvador approved changes to its constitution to allow for indefinite presidential reelection. Scavino shared the news on X, saying “Want to see heads explode?” and “CC’ing” the president.

Though Scavino’s post is self-admittedly an attempt to spark hysteria among Americans who still care about democracy, the potential for a third Trump term is no joke. Just yesterday during an interview with Fox about Senator Josh Hawley’s stock trading bill, Senator Rand Paul objected to how Trump could hypothetically be impacted by the bill, despite its carveout for the current administration.

“Future presidents wouldn’t be allowed to own things, so Donald Trump or the next president, which, you know, or some say he might run for a third term,” Paul said on Fox Business.

And Trump himself said in March that there are “methods” for him seeking a third term—and has clarified that he is “not joking.”

In March, GOP leadership discouraged its lawmakers from holding in-person town halls amid mounting backlash to the Trump administration.

Representative Bryan Steil of Wisconsin was the first Republican in the state to disobey this directive. After constituents held weekly protests outside his office urging him to hold an in-person event, Steil finally relented with what his office called a “listening session.”

After months of virtual-only town halls, there was lots of listening to do.

Steil entered the Elkhorn High School auditorium on Thursday to resounding boos and faced a raucous crowd for the duration of the 80-minute session, including fierce questions on his support of Trump’s agenda, as well as frequent interruptions, chants, and jeering.

Attendees were evidently fired up over Steil’s support of Trump’s budget, poised to tilt taxes in favor of the rich while tattering the social safety net. Steil defended his vote on the bill, which is also estimated to balloon the national debt by trillions of dollars. (When the lawmaker mentioned national debt as a pressing issue, one attendee interjected: “Thanks to you!”)

He also voiced his support of Trump’s controversial immigration policies—a topic that elicited “some of the loudest boos,” according to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.

More than one person in attendance referred to the Florida immigrant detention camp callously dubbed “Alligator Alcatraz” as a concentration camp, which Steil objected to. A constituent noted that “the difference between a prison or a detention center and a concentration camp is due process.”

Steil also had to address Trump’s tariffs (which one attendee called “a terrible tax that’s going to be placed on the citizens of the United States”), as well as Trump’s push to all but abolish the Department of Education (“Education is best resolved at the local level,” Steil said).

Many questions Steil faced reflected a widespread perception that Steil is in Trump’s pocket. One attendee said, “Southeast Wisconsin has not been represented by you. President Trump seems to run Southeast Wisconsin through you.”

Another made similar remarks in the context of immigration. “What I see happening to our immigrant population embarrasses me—horrifies me,” she said. “You have not raised a voice to complain about it. Where do I see your leadership? I see no leadership—I see you following Trump 100 percent of the time.” In response to this latter question, Steil, ironically, “lauded Trump’s executive orders and deportations,” Wisconsin Public Radio reports.

At another point in the meeting, though, he insisted that he doesn’t “always line up” with GOP leadership.

He has somewhat of a point there, as holding the town hall at all certainly went against his party leadership’s advice.

While resolute on enacting the more destructive elements of the president’s agenda, at least Steil eventually proved willing to hear his constituents’ concerns face to face. It’s more than can be said for many other Republicans in Congress. As one of Steil’s critics in the crowd told him: “I applaud you for standing up here and taking it.”

The president still doesn’t have a clear explanation for his own recent claims about his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein.

Speaking with reporters at the White House Thursday, Trump reiterated that he had thrown the child sex trafficker out of Mar-a-Lago after he learned that Epstein was grooming underage female employees, but failed to elaborate on his understanding of why Epstein had, in Trump’s words, “stolen” the young girls.

“At the time, did you know why he was taking those young women?” asked a journalist in the room.

“No, I didn’t know,” Trump said. “But no, I don’t know really why, but I said if he’s taken anybody from Mar-a-Lago, he’s hiring or whatever, I didn’t like it. We threw him out, we said we didn’t want him.

“I didn’t like it, that he was doing that,” Trump added.

Trump’s comments barely address his stumble aboard Air Force One earlier this week, when he admitted that he knew Virginia Giuffre—one of Epstein’s most prominent accusers—was one of the “stolen” girls. His remarks on Tuesday partially corroborated Giuffre’s account of being abducted in 2000 by Epstein’s longtime associate, Ghislaine Maxwell, at Mar-a-Lago, where Giuffre worked at the time as a pool attendant.

Trump and his allies have alluded to multiple Epstein victims having come into the alleged sex trafficker’s orbit at Mar-a-Lago but only named one: Giuffre. She met Epstein at Mar-a-Lago in 2000—and Trump’s close friendship with Epstein continued for years after. If Trump really was furious, as he now claims, he certainly didn’t show it. Indeed, their friendship didn’t fracture until 2004, when the two found themselves competing for the same glitzy Palm Beach house—and Epstein remained a Mar-a-Lago member until 2007, only being kicked out after a reporter called about his status following a Florida sex crimes conviction.

Donald Trump is finally getting his wish to turn the White House into the gaudy resort he calls home by adding a $200 million ballroom. 

The White House announced that it would begin construction in September on a 90,000-square-foot ballroom that can seat 650 people. 

Yes, Trump is laser focused on the issues that matter most to Americans: replacing the “large and unsightly” tent that typically hosts guests just 100 yards away from the building. 

During a press conference Thursday afternoon, Trump confirmed that he wouldn’t spend any taxpayer dollars on the $200 million project. “It’s a private thing, yeah, and we’ll probably have some donors,” he said. 

“They’ve wanted a ballroom at the White House for more than 150 years, but there’s never been a president that’s good at ballrooms,” he added. 

Trump said the expansion would not “interfere” with the White House. “It’ll be near it but not touching it, and pays total respect to the existing building,”  

Trump’s mission to add a gaudy event hall to the White House didn’t come out of nowhere—he claims that he pitched it to the last two presidents. During a press conference in February, Trump said he’d asked Joe Biden about building a ballroom in the White House, offering to have it built himself. 

“I was going to build a beautiful, beautiful ballroom like I’ve done before,” Trump said. “It would cost $100 million. I told them again and again. They didn’t know what to do. They had no idea.”

He made a similar claim on the presidential campaign trail in 2016, telling his supporters that he’d offered to have a ballroom built for the Obamas. 

Trump has already begun a massive decor overhaul at the White House, gilding the Oval Office with gaudy gold detailing and ornate crown molding, plastering a golden Trump crest above the door, and shipping in golden cherub statues straight from Mar-a-Lago, according to The Daily Beast. 

It’s clear that Trump much prefers the luxury aesthetics of his resort home, and with the dismal report card he’s received in office so far, the president should feel free to pack his bags any time. 

In 2024, Trump was so protective of judges who ruled in his favor that he claimed it’s illegal to publicly criticize them.

Not so when judges rule against him, apparently. In recent months, as judges serve as bulwarks against his administration’s lawless actions, the president has lashed out, leading his supporters to inundate them with threats.

At a virtual event held by Speak Up for Justice on Thursday, judges spoke up about the vitriol they’ve faced of late.

U.S. District Judge John McConnell, who blocked Trump’s federal aid freeze earlier this year, said his court has received four or five hundred “vile, threatening” voicemails.

“We’re going to come for him,” said one voice message, which was played at the meeting. “You know what, motherfucker? Your ass is going to go to prison. OK, son of a bitch? And I wish somebody would fucking assassinate your ass. Somebody needs to fucking wipe his ass out.”

McConnell has received six credible death threats, he said, recalling one instance in which “someone was on the dark web searching for my home address, because, this is a quote, he wanted, ‘Smith & Wesson to pay me a visit at my home.’”

McConnell said of the threats: “I’ve been on the bench almost 15 years, and I must say it’s the one time that actually shook my faith in the judicial system, in the rule of law, in the work that we do with the Constitution.”

McConnell and others also said they received threats in the form of pizza deliveries to their home addresses to indicate that they’ve been doxed.

Sometimes, in order to make the message clearer and threaten judges’ families, such pizza deliveries are made in the name of Daniel Anderl, the late son of another judge at Thursday’s event, District Judge Esther Salas. Anderl was killed in 2020 by a disgruntled lawyer attempting to attack Salas.

District Judge Robert Lasnik, whose family was sent pizzas in Anderl’s name, said he believes over 50 judges have received pizzas.

Salas spoke to the distressing experience of hearing the name of her late son, who “stands for … love and light,” be weaponized “to inflict fear on” judges.

“What we need is our political leaders, from the top down, to stop fanning these flames, to stop using irresponsible rhetoric, to stop referring to judges as corrupt and biased and monsters that hate America,” Salas said.

District Judge John Coughenour, who blocked Trump’s executive order against birthright citizenship, described being swatted.

“The local sheriff’s office received a call saying that I had murdered my wife, and then arrived at my house with weapons drawn,” Coughenour recalled. Soon after, he said, they received a message from the FBI that there was a bomb at their house.

“There wasn’t, but what kind of people do these things?” Coughenour said.

Toward the end of the event, Lasnik recounted the heroism of federal judges who, during the civil rights era, pushed for the enforcement of desegregation “over the objections of Southern governors.”

Such judges faced “death threats, bombings of their family home,” Lasnik said. “They were under tremendous physical intimidation and threats.”

The difference between then and today? “In that period of time, the presidents of the United States—President Dwight D. Eisenhower and President John F. Kennedy—enforced the courts’ rulings and didn’t support defying them,” Lasnik said.

“And we’re hopeful that this administration will do the same thing and support the courts’ rulings and not defy them going forward.”