'Trump 2028' hats seen on Oval Office desk during meeting with lawmakers

On Sept. 29, 2025, Congressional leaders from both parties met with U.S. President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance in the White House to discuss possible compromises to avoid a government shutdown on Oct. 1.

While the discussion was ultimately in vain, some social media users expressed frustration for another reason — photos from the meeting purportedly showing red hats reading "Trump 2028" sitting on the president's desk.

Trump, who was elected to a nonconsecutive second term in 2024, is constitutionally ineligible to run as president in 2028, when his second term concludes, due to the 22nd Amendment.

However, rumors about him considering running for a third term have swirled for some time, and the official retail website (archived) of the Trump Organization was selling (archived) red hats reading "Trump 2028." The product description read: "Rewrite the rules with the Trump 2028 high crown hat."

Such rumors predated the commencement of Trump's second stint in the White House on Jan. 20, 2025. At different points, Trump has both suggested and ruled out the idea of a third term.

Snopes readers wrote in wondering if the photos seemingly showing the red hats present in the meeting were real.

In short, they were. Snopes found no evidence that the images were the product of artificial intelligence, and news outlets covered the hats.

Conservative news media outlet Fox News published an article about the hats, calling it a "taunt." Vance also appeared on the network (see the 10:10 mark of the article's video, archived here), saying (archived) that the hats "made the minority leader in both the House and the Senate very uncomfortable."

House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries, who was in the meeting, told CNN the hats just "randomly appeared in the middle of the meeting," and called it "the strangest thing ever."

"I just looked at the hat, looked at JD Vance, who was seated to my left, and said 'Don't you got a problem with this?'" Jeffries said. "And he said, 'No comment.'"

Trump posted three different photos of the meeting on his social media site, Truth Social, on Sept. 30. All three contained the "Trump 2028" hats.