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Trump 2028 merchandise, including t-shirts, hats, and can coolers, are now available for sale in Trump’s official online store. The t-shirt says “TRUMP 2028 (Rewrite the Rules),” and the ad copy adds cheerfully: “The future looks bright! Rewrite the rules with the new Trump 2028 t-shirt.” As you may expect, heads are already exploding on the left.

A leftist who has over 41,000 followers on X and exhorts them to “Resist” summed up a common leftist response to Trump’s floating the idea of a third term by writing, “The ‘Trump 2028’ push is a calculated campaign to normalize authoritarianism in America. With 270 million followers, Musk is the most powerful political amplifier alive – and he’s using that reach to casually mainstream the idea of a dictatorship.” On ABC30 Action News’ post about the store offerings, one woman commented, “Hell no, please impeach this man already!” Ah, yes, the Democrats’ perennial fallback strategy.

The establishment media, meanwhile, hastened to remind the world that the 22nd Amendment says that “No person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice.” The Guardian warns that “any serious effort to amend the founding document would send the United States into uncharted territory.” Yeah, who ever heard of the Constitution being amended? Uncharted territory, indeed.

And in late March, when Trump suggested that he was interested in a third term and that the 22^nd Amendment wasn’t an insurmountable obstacle (although in all the excitement, it has been completely forgotten that he also said, “I’m not looking at that” and “I don’t even want to talk about a third term now”), New York Magazine stopped hyperventilating long enough to publish an article entitled: “If Trump Gets a 3rd Term, Democracy Will Have Already Ended.” Yeah, yeah, just like we have all died from COVID two or three times over by now.

Amid all the hysteria over Trump’s third term talk, one salient detail seems to have been widely forgotten: He would have to win the 2028 election to remain in the Oval Office after Jan. 20, 2029. The Trump 2028 merch in the Trump online store takes that for granted; otherwise, there would be no need to mention the next presidential election year. No one is talking about canceling elections and ruling as a dictator except leftists who are claiming that Trump wants to do that.

Also, the idea of a president serving a third term didn’t become a symptom of authoritarian dictatorship until Trump started talking about it. Barack Obama said in 2015, “I am in my second term. It has been an extraordinary privilege for me to serve as President of the United States. I cannot imagine a greater honor or a more interesting job. I love my work. But under our Constitution, I cannot run again. I can’t run again. I actually think I’m a pretty good President — I think if I ran, I could win. But I can’t.”

Obama also famously said in late 2020, “I used to say if I can make an arrangement where I had a stand-in or front-man or front-woman and they had an earpiece in and I was just in my basement in my sweats looking through the stuff and I could sort of deliver the lines while someone was doing all the talking and ceremony, I’d be fine with that because I found the work fascinating.” Hmm, could it be that exactly that plan was implemented from 2021 to 2025?

Whether it was or not, nobody was running around spreading the-sky-is-falling hysteria about Obama’s third term talk. And back when Franklin Delano Roosevelt broke a 150-year-old precedent and was elected not only to a third, but also to a fourth term, it was Republicans who pushed through the 22^ndAmendment in the first place. Back then, Democrats were the ones assuring the world that the republic was not endangered if someone were elected to the presidency three or more times.

But this is Trump, and so it’s a vastly different story. And while the president himself has remained resolutely mum about how exactly he could run in 2028, the online store offerings prompted a new flurry of speculation. Eric Trump was photographed wearing the Trump 2028 hat; could he be thinking of a 2028 run? Or Donald Trump Jr., who has already been rumored to be considering a run?

Or is the whole thing a joke, another instance of Trump’s masterful trolling of the left? Elon Musk seems to think so, as he reposted the photo of Eric Trump wearing a Trump 2028 hat with fire and laughing emojis. The left’s hysteria over a Trump third term certainly shows up its hypocrisy and Trump derangement, and keeps it in the perpetual limbo of hating Trump rather than formulating a positive policy program that might actually appeal to Americans.

And so, in response to the Trump online store offerings, the best course of action is clear: grab some popcorn and watch the show, as the master troll drives those who would destroy him crazy once again.