Trump’s third term trial balloon: how extremist ideas become mainstream

The president has been testing the waters by suggesting he could run again, a familiar playbook of the Maga movement – and a distraction tactic It is noon on 20 January 2029. In the biting cold of Washington, thousands of people are gathered on the National Mall to witness the swearing in of a new US president or, more accurately, an old US president: Donald Trump, aged 82, starting his third term in office.The scene is the realm of fantasy or, for millions of Americans, the stuff of night