Trump reshares video suggesting he’ll be president forever moments after impeachment vote

Emboldened POTUS repeats ‘joke’ he could stay on in White House after two terms

Donald Trump has promoted a bizarre video suggesting he will be president “4eva”, moments after senators voted to bring the impeachment trial to an end.

The footage shows a never-ending line of Trump campaign signs stretching into the future, which he previously shared in June.

It is a “manipulated” version of a Time animation, the magazine said, used to illustrate an October article suggesting Trumpism would prevail long after the 45th president leaves office.

Minutes after the Senate acquitted him on two charges of abuse of power and obstruction of justice, Mr Trump took to Twitter to re-share the video and pin it to the top of his feed.

It is far from the first time Mr Trump has brought up serving more than two terms in the White House, which is expressly forbidden by the US Constitution.

While he claims to be joking only for the purpose of winding up liberals, some commentators have suggested his repeated references to staying in office could be an attempt to normalise the idea before making a serious attempt.

Mr Trump previously parodied the imagined reaction to him clinging to power, joking: "See, I told you he was a dictator.”

Mr Trump has a rocky history with Time magazine, which named him Person of the Year in 2016, as it has many US presidents since the concept’s creation in 1927.

But in 2017, it emerged that fake covers purporting to show Mr Trump in a 2009 edition were hung on the walls of at least four of his golf resorts, in an apparent attempt to convince guests of his longstanding relevance.

And when Greta Thunberg won the award in December, the president’s team released an edited version of the magazine cover, with Mr Trump’s face edited on to the teenage climate activist’s body.

After becoming the third president in history to be impeached in the House, senators decided to clear Mr Trump of all wrongdoing on Wednesday.

Republican senator Mitt Romney was the only senator to break ranks, voting that Mr Trump’s dealings in Ukraine constituted an abuse of power.

On the eve of his acquittal, the president gave his last State of the Union speech unless re-elected – hours after storming to victory in the Iowa caucuses with 97 per cent of the Republican vote, and as a new Gallup poll put his approval ratings at an all-time high of 49 per cent.

Hinting at the mood in the White House as the impeachment ordeal comes to an end, the theme of Mr Trump’s annual address was “the great American comeback”.

After re-sharing the “Trump 4eva” animation, the president announced he would make a statement on Thursday at midday “to discuss our Country’s VICTORY on the Impeachment Hoax!”

White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham claimed the upper chamber handed Mr Trump “full vindication and exoneration”.