Inside Trump's new weird obsession with the number 22

President Donald Trump seems to be obsessed with the number 22 — and no one really knows why.

“Donald Trump may be the 80-year-old who is both the 45th and 47th president of the United States, but lately, his favorite number seems to be 22,” reported NBC News' Monica Alba and Caroline Kenny on Sunday. This includes falsely claiming that Washington DC has 22 fountains (it has 18), that he had proved wrong 22 Nobel Prize-winning economists and that the military recently destroyed 22 ships in Iran. He has also discussed a swimming pool he built 22 years ago, described meeting with 22 medical specialists and complained that a possible trip to Asia would take 22 hours.

“In June, we obliterated Iran’s nuclear capacity in Operation Midnight Hammer, you saw that. People have been waiting for 22 years to do that,” Trump said in January to a crowd in Iowa.

In March, describing another Iranian mission, he said that “they call ’em mine droppers, and the mine droppers, 22, all 22, are gone.”

Similarly, at a Hanukkah reception, Trump said that “we were practicing this, this. And the predecessors we were practicing for 22 years, they said, for 22 years they were practicing. And no president had the courage to let them go and do that. They wanted to do it for 22 years, and the predecessors being the young pilots at the time, but for 22 years, three times a year, they were practicing that run.”

It is unclear why Trump has fixated on this particular number. Many presidents have superstitions, such as President Franklin Roosevelt’s fear of the number of 13 famously prompting him to never attend a dinner where there were exactly 13 guests. In Trump’s case, however, the 22 obsession is causing him to do more than create logistical headaches for his event planners. Trump is saying things that are factually inaccurate, over and over again, to conform to his 22 obsession.

It is notable that Trump does have one 22 obsession that could have a direct policy impact — namely, his determination to repeal the 22nd Amendment so he can run for a third term.

“Maybe we do one more term. Should we do one more?” Trump told his audience at the Port of Corpus Christi in Texas at one point. “Do one more term. Well, we are entitled to it.” He argued that the 22nd Amendment should be repealed, repeating his false claim that the 2020 election was stolen from and saying for that reason he is entitled to “my third term.”

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