Third-Term Project For Trump 2028

February 2025. Oxon Hill, Maryland. The lobby of the Gaylord National Resort & Convention Center. A man in a dark gray suit stopped in front of the display board. He ran the pad of his index finger across the poster's surface—the ink wasn't fully dry, and a smudge of black stained his fingertip. He turned to his companion and tilted his chin up. "Caesar." The companion stepped closer. They stood silent for two seconds, then the companion pulled out his phone and took a picture.

The Trump on the poster was only a profile—the line from his nose to his forehead stretched into the sharp right angles of a classical bust, as if traced from a Latin textbook. At the bottom, a bold black typeface: "Third Term Project—Trump 2028...And Beyond!" On the adjacent table, circular stickers were scattered, white with red letters: "Finish the Mission."

The man in gray was later identified as Shane Trejo, head of the Third Term Project. When independent journalist Ford Fischer interviewed him, he stubbed his cigarette into a disposable coffee cup and said, "We just put him right there—Trump as Caesar. Great visual." He paused, then added, "The left will be angry. Good."

Trejo's co-host was Alex Vitoslavsky, a member of the white nationalist group Identity Evropa. The two had launched a podcast together shortly after the 2017 "Unite the Right" rally in Charlottesville. Its name: Blood, Soil, and Freedom. One episode was titled "Tanner Flake as Führer." The show's description boasted that its commentary on "current events" was "consistently untamed," and its usual targets were listed as "communist trash, libertarians, cuckservative conservatives, sluts, stooges, welfare immigrants, and the French." Those words resurfaced in February 2025, pinned to the top of a political forum thread.

On the day the poster went up, Tennessee Representative Andy Ogles was in his Capitol Hill office, signing a proposal. He finished the last line, set his pen down on the constitutional amendment text—the page read: amend the 22nd Amendment from "no person shall be elected more than twice" to "no person shall be elected more than three times," with an exception applying only to those who had served two non‑consecutive terms. The filing date was three days after Trump's inauguration. Outside the window, a pigeon landed on the sill and pecked at its own wing.

New York Representative Dan Goldman was cornered by reporters in a hallway during a hearing recess the following week. Hands in his pockets, he didn't slow down after hearing the question. He said only: "How did Caesar die?" Then he turned into the elevator. That afternoon, his office released a draft resolution affirming congressional support for the 22nd Amendment. New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd wrote in her piece: "At least America's king of chaos hasn't made his horse a consul. Then again, a horse might be better than some of the people around him." That line was screenshot and shared over four thousand times on Bluesky. One top comment read: "The same people who screamed 'deep state' are now openly fantasizing about a dictator for life. Do they know how many times Caesar was stabbed?"

March 2026. Grapevine, Texas. The same conference, same venue. A folded copy of that poster was tucked sideways into a scrap cardboard box, creased into four panels. Inside the box were leftover stickers from the previous year, their adhesive yellowed and curling at the edges. A 26‑year‑old from Lubbock, Matthew Kingston, stood near the main stage and told a Washington Examiner reporter: "He's got to pass the torch to Vance." As he spoke, he unconsciously rubbed the corner of his event wristband.

The reporter asked if he remembered last year's Caesar poster. He frowned, thought for three seconds, and said: "Oh, that thing." Then he turned back to watch the vice president speaking on stage.

Trump was not there. It was the first CPAC he had missed in nearly a decade. Outside the convention hall, a few volunteers were dismantling an old display board. It took three turns of the screwdriver to loosen the bolts. One of them remarked that the White House had bigger concerns lately—the cost of living, infighting within MAGA, and the war with Iran in the Middle East, each more urgent than the last.

Three days after the conference ended, a maintenance worker discovered a square patch of adhesive residue on the east wall of the main hall—the poster had been up so long that the glue had seeped into the wall's paint layer. He wiped it twice with a damp cloth, sprayed solvent, and scraped off the gray‑black film on the third try. The wall revealed its original cream color, with a faint rectangular outline around the edges, as if someone had traced it lightly in pencil.

The poster itself was eventually rolled up and tossed into a recycling bin. In the damp bottom of the bin, the ink smeared; the "8" in "2028" blurred until it looked something like a "3"—but not quite. No one bothered to correct it.