Welcome back to False Flag. We’ve got a packed issue! I know what day it is, but everything you’re about to read is actual reporting, no jokes. And even when you think, ‘This can’t be true, it must be a prank!,’ it’s still not a prank. Let’s go. When ‘Owning The Libs’ > The ConstitutionIs Trump serious about a third term? Is he joking? Does it matter, so long as Dems are outraged?
Third Term MomentumWILL DONALD TRUMP IGNORE THE CONSTITUTION and run for a third term in 2028? Would Republicans support it? Trump himself is clearly open to it, or at least doing his best to pretend to be. On Sunday, he told Meet the Press that “there are methods” that would allow him to be president for another four years. Most Republicans aren’t openly clamoring for a third Trump term. Rep. Andy Ogles (R-Tenn.) has introduced a doomed constitutional amendment to let Trump run. Gadfly Shane Trejo had a booth at CPAC pushing for a third term, featuring a picture of Trump styled as Caesar. But for now, most right-wing personalities are pushing “Trump 2028” more as a way to own the libs rather than grappling with it seriously. On his online show Monday, Trump devotee Benny Johnson discussed the concept by pulling out a comically large prop salt shaker for a segment he calls “Salt That Lib!”
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt took a similar tack on Monday, chiding the press for “melting down” over Trump’s answer. And Senate Majority Leader John Thune likewise downplayed all the chatter as the president just trying to get a rise. “You guys keep asking the question,” Thune said Monday, “and I think he’s probably having some fun with it, probably messing with you guys.” For Trump, the third-term trial balloon has some obvious short-term political benefits; chief among them, it lets him avoid coming off as a lame duck with no political future after January 2029. But while this can seem like classic Trump “shiny object” distraction stuff, I think it’s worth paying a little more attention to it. That’s because grassroots Trump supporters, at least, are open to it. I recently watched a focus group of self-identified Trump supporters organized by The Bulwark’s publisher, Sarah Longwell, in which participants were asked whether they would support Trump running in 2028. No one was gung-ho about it. But no one ruled it out or said it was nuts and obviously illegal, either. Instead, the group as a whole adopted a “wait and see” approach, saying they wanted to evaluate how Trump’s second term goes before backing him for another four years. To me, that’s a sign that a base of support would be there for another Trump run, since Trump has shown that he can retain his core supporters no matter what his actual performance is in office. It also suggests that whatever squeamishness elected Republicans have with the idea of a third term, they will likely get on board if it came to it. MAGA online video reporter Brian Glenn, who’s probably most famous for being Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s (R-Ga.) boyfriend and demanding to know why Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky wasn’t wearing a suit in the White House, thinks so too. On Monday, Glenn said that Trump’s supporters would give a “thumbs up” to the idea of a third term. Naturally, QAnon believers are way ahead of us all. In the wake of the NBC interview, I saw multiple QAnon personalities on right-wing YouTube alternative Rumble reacting to the idea of Trump’s third term by seeing it as a sign that their long-awaited arrests of top Democrats and Hollywood figures must be imminent. The X22 Report—perhaps the premier QAnon video show—posited that Trump would in fact be on his fourth term if he wins in 2028, because Trump, in fact, won in 2020 and merely allowed Joe Biden to reign as a puppet. MAHA Feud Features Alleged Olivia Nuzzi Paparazzi Stunt Gone BadTHE PERSONALITIES IN AND AROUND Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s “Make America Healthy Again” movement love to argue with each other. Over the past few days, MAHA world was absolutely roiled by a baroque feud among several pro-Trump personalities, culminating in the very viral, and obviously false, claim that RFK Jr. is being sexually blackmailed by the State of Israel. I inadvertently kicked this all off a few weeks ago when I went on The Bulwark podcast and referred to RFK Jr. acolyte and conspiracy theorist Jessica Reed Kraus—who has 1 million Instagram followers on her “House Inhabit” account—in a tone that she considered condescending and dismissive of her work as a citizen journalist. Kraus, who visited the White House a few days ago and posed for pictures with Trump and Vance in the Oval Office, responded to the podcast with a newsletter demanding more respect. She also attacked rivals like podcaster Candace Owens, accusing her of “floundering” and essentially stealing Kraus’s own shtick. On Friday, Owens dropped her own nuke on Kraus: a nearly hour-long video full of drama about how Kraus and a friend were supposedly cooking up a hit piece on Owens, only for it to be quashed after journalist Olivia Nuzzi warned Kraus the story wasn’t worth running. That’s right. Olivia Nuzzi, the one-time star New York Magazine reporter whose career derailed last year over a sexting relationship with RFK Jr., has resurfaced in MAHA world. Nuzzi and Kraus had both been in Kennedy’s orbit. But the two had a falling out after the sexting saga, with Kraus feeling that Nuzzi had used their friendship to fulfill a sexual obsession with the now–secretary of health and human services. According to Kraus, they’re friends again. After Owens’s YouTube video, some of Kraus’s friends turned on her. One, Emilie Hagen, said that Kraus had been trying to get buzz for the fact that she had rekindled her friendship with Nuzzi and that she subsequently grew frustrated that no one in the broader media seemed to care. Kraus had tried to draw attention to the rekindled friendship by dropping numerous hints about it in her newsletter. She even had teased that there would be a secret guest (and that it would be Nuzzi) at a party that was thrown for her by her publisher, Substack. (The Bulwark is also published on Substack.) When that seemed to flop, Kraus purportedly staged a fake paparazzi-style photoshoot to “leak” pictures of her with Nuzzi to, once again, generate interest in their friendship. The alleged paparazzi stunt failed, however, when the photographer’s camera died before the pictures could be taken. Making content isn’t easy! Kraus and Nuzzi didn’t respond to requests for comment. Daily Wire Business WoesWILL THE MYSTERIES SURROUNDING the Daily Wire never cease? It seems like every week, we get more proof that the supposedly booming media company founded by Ben Shapiro is on shaky-ish financial ground. Last month, both its CEO and president abruptly stepped down. Then, over the weekend, the site laid off an unspecified number of employees. The layoffs, according to X posts from laid-off staffers, included the entire children’s TV section. So say goodbye to their show about a family of chinchillas. In a statement, a Daily Wire spokesman told me the company decided to “reduce some of our workforce.” Progressive streamer Hasan Piker had an interesting video about the Daily Wire recently, arguing that Shapiro’s own YouTube views have plummeted, both because the audience wants more antisemitism, and because the suit-wearing Shapiro is too polished to appeal to the crucial basement-dweller demographic. “The edgy boys have moved on,” Piker said. You’re a free subscriber to Bulwark+. For unfettered access to all our newsletters and ad-free and member-only podcasts, become a paying subscriber. Did you know? You can update your newsletter preferences as often as you like. To update the list of newsletter or alerts you received from The Bulwark, click here.
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