President Donald Trump joked about staying in office well past the end of his second term on Monday, an idea he’s regularly toyed with.
It was part of his lengthy ramble at the White House small business summit, where the president, 79, ping-ponged from topic to topic as he repeatedly went off script.
The president has suggested on multiple occasions that he could serve a third term in defiance of the U.S. Constitution since he returned to office less than a year and a half ago.
“When I get out of office in, let’s say, eight or nine years from now, I’ll be able to use it, I’ll be able to use it myself,” Trump said during his remarks about tax deductions. If Trump were to stay in office another nine years, he would be 88 when finally leaving office.
As he took his latest dig at the Constitution, his supporters in the room laughed and cheered.
Trump has sent mixed signals and suggested on numerous occasions that he could run again in 2028 for a fourth time.
While some of the president’s supporters have argued Trump is simply joking, the president last year claimed in an interview with NBC News that he was not. He has since gone back and forth on the idea, indicating in another interview that he would be a two-term president before continuing to bring up the idea.
Critics have raised concerns about his repeated indications that he was considering how he could serve beyond two terms in office.
The president’s off-script ramblings at the summit on Monday did not end with him floating the idea of staying in office for another eight years.
He also ranted about his ballroom, touted his background in pool building with a lengthy spiel about redoing the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool on the National Mall in “American flag blue,” and bragged about his cognitive abilities.
“In my opinion, anybody running for president or vice president should take a cognitive test,” Trump declared. “And no president has ever taken one except me. I’ve taken three of them, and I’ve aced each one.”
The president’s comments came after he also went on a tirade about taking a cognitive test just last week, where he bragged about being able to identify a bear. This week, his example included a squirrel.
“They are hard. There are many people in this room that I know are smart, they’re not going to ace them,” Trump rambled. “You know the first question is very easy, and they always show the first question. It’s you have a lion, a bear, an alligator, and a—what’s another good?— a squirrel, okay. ‘Which is the squirrel?’”
Trump went on to say that while the first questions are easy, they get tougher by the middle. The president claims he takes a cognitive test whenever he hears criticism of his mental acuity.
“Then they said, ‘he’s a total moron. This guy’s so stupid,’ and so whenever I hear that one, I say, ‘let’s take the cognitive test.’”
At another point, Trump vented about the coverage of the war in Iran, insisting that the negative polling is “fake.” He claimed he called it a “mini war” and warned that with the wrong president, the U.S. could be in World War III.
At another point, he called the Iran war a “little detour” that’s working out “very nicely” and was going “very well.”
But when the president was not firing off about a series of random issues on Monday, he appeared to be struggling to even stay awake on his feet.
As Small Business Administrator Kelly Loeffler spoke briefly, the president stood by, with his eyes fluttering closed as he stood by her side.
