Trump cannot legally run in 2028. His people have been working on that for two years.

Donald Trump put on a red cap reading “Trump 2028” at the White House Correspondents' Association dinner on Friday and told the room he was announcing a fourth term.

“I'm pleased to announce my intention to — and this is somewhat of a scoop — my intention to run for a fourth term as president of the United States,” he said.

It was a bit. He was doing stand-up.

The room barely laughed.

The trouble is that the joke has a supply chain.

The Trump Organization has been selling the 2028 hat since April last year, at $50, alongside T-shirts carrying the slogan “Rewrite the Rules”.

Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington counted at least 622 products launched by the store this term, with the 2028 line pushed in marketing emails headed “Four More Years”.

Steve Bannon told The Economist there was a plan.

“There's many different alternatives,” he said. “At the appropriate time, we'll lay out what the plan is, but there is a plan, and Trump will be the president in '28.”

Tennessee Republican Andy Ogles has already introduced a resolution to amend the two-term limit, worded so that it would free Trump but not Barack Obama, George W. Bush or Bill Clinton.

Alan Dershowitz handed Trump a draft of his book, Could President Trump Constitutionally Serve a Third Term?, in the Oval Office in December.

And when NBC asked him directly, Trump said there were “methods which you could do it”.

“I'm not joking,” he said then.

He is joking now. That is the technique.

The 22nd Amendment is not ambiguous: no person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice.

The 12th closes the side door, barring anyone ineligible for the presidency from the vice presidency — which kills the theory of Trump running as JD Vance's number two and taking over when Vance resigns.

Changing any of it needs two-thirds of both houses of Congress and ratification by three-quarters of the states.

He does not have the room. He does not have the country either.

Polling puts his net approval around minus 22, which CNN's Harry Enten calls the weakest position of any modern second-term president at this point.

A Reuters/Ipsos poll found even a slim majority of Republicans think he should not seek a third term.

So no, he cannot do it, and the numbers say he could not win it.

But nobody sells a hat for two years about a thing they have no intention of trying.

The gag is not the plan. The gag is how you get the country used to the plan.