Organizations representing President Donald Trump, the Republican Party and a key group of House Republicans are fundraising off of an effort to give Trump a third term in office.
“New bill would give President Trump a THIRD TERM,” read one fundraising text message received Tuesday. “Do YOU want to see President Trump have a third term??”
A link at the end of the message went to WinRed, the conservative fundraising platform.
“A new bill would give President Trump a THIRD TERM,” the page blares. “We need to hear from you. Are YOU ready to give President Trump a THIRD TERM to truly MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN?”
Donations on the page go to three groups: The “House Conservatives Fund,” a political action committee associatedwith the Republican Study Committee, a large and powerful group of congressional Republicans; “Trump National Committee JFC,” Trump’s joint fundraising committee with the Republican Party; and Rep. August Pfluger’s (R-Texas) congressional campaign. Pfluger is the current chair of the RSC.
Jason Miller, a spokesperson for Trump’s political operation, denounced the fundraising pitch in a statment to HuffPost.
“This fundraising solicitation was not approved by President Trump’s political operation and most definitely was not approved by President Trump,” Miller wrote. “As a reminder, President Trump does not respond favorably to political entities trying to raise money off his name, image, and likeness, without explicit advance approval.”
None of the other groups fundraising off of the message immediately responded to HuffPost’s questions Tuesday. Nor did representatives for the Republican Study Committee, the Republican Party or the White House.
The 22nd Amendment to the U.S. Constitution plainly states “no person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice,” but ever since his November election, Trump and key supporters, including Steve Bannon, have begun making noise about four more years.
Trump himself has spokenopenly about staying in power past the end of his current term. He’s also referred to himself as “KING,” quoted Napoleon Bonaparte — “He who saves his Country does not violate any Law” — and has spoken since his election, including to Republican members of Congress, about an unconstitutional third term.
Rep. Andy Ogles (Tenn.), a member of the Republican Study Committee, has proposed a bill to amend the Constitution, replacing language prohibiting being elected president “more than twice” with “more than three times,” and adding new language prohibiting being elected to another term “after being elected to two consecutive terms” — which, for example, would prevent former President Barack Obama from running again.
The bill would need a two-thirds vote in both the House of Representatives and the Senate, and to be ratified by three-fourths of states. It currently has no co-sponsors.
“This amendment would allow President Trump to serve three terms, ensuring that we can sustain the bold leadership our nation so desperately needs,” Ogles said in a January press release on the proposal.
The beneficiaries of the fundraising message about a third Trump term make up key parts of Trump’s Republican Party.
The joint fundraising committee was a major player in Trump’s 2024 campaign: Trump and the Republican Party used the committee to raise nearly a half-billion dollars in 2024, according to Federal Election Commission records.
After the election, the nature of the joint fundraising committee changed: The Republican Party still made up one of its two members, but Trump’s campaign was replaced in the partnership with Never Surrender, a “leadership PAC,” or LPAC, that Trump can use to support other candidates — or to pay his own legal bills.
A November HuffPost analysis found a previous Trump leadership PAC — Save America — spent over twice as much on lawyers and law firms than it did helping other Republican candidates.
Miller told HuffPost he was speaking on behalf of Never Surrender, which he referred to as “the renamed political campaign.”
Between Nov. 26 and Dec. 31 last year, Never Surrender received nearly $21 million in donations, FEC records show.
And the Republican Study Committee is the largest conservative caucus in Congress; most House Republicans are members. In his campaign late last year to be elected chair of the group, Pfluger pitched “reimagining” the caucus’s electoral activities, with a focus on the House Conservatives Fund, The Hill reported in September. The PAC has historically called itself “the political arm of the Republican Study Committee,” though its website currently leads to an error page.
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The same Hill report noted that a handout from Pfluger called for “taking fundraising for the group ‘to new heights,’ hiring a full-time political director for the PAC, and providing financial support to vulnerable incumbents,” in the report’s words. The privacy policy for one House Conservatives Fund fundraising page links directly to Pfluger’s own campaign website.