Former acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney said Thursday he anticipated that President Donald Trump would run again in 2024 if he loses reelection.
Mulvaney made the prediction while participating in a webinar hosted by the Institute for International and European Affairs.
“I would absolutely expect the president to stay involved in politics and would absolutely put him on the shortlist of people who are likely to run in 2024,” he said, according to the Irish Times.
President Trump’s former Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney predicts Trump might run in 2024: “He doesn’t like losing.” pic.twitter.com/hGlAUCaYJr
— The Recount (@therecount) November 5, 2020
He also pointed out that Trump would still be younger than Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden should both men choose to run again in four years.
Unlike Biden, Trump is “very high energy” and will spend much of his time “further engaged in 2024 or 2028 if he were to lose this election.”
Mulvaney added that Trump “doesn’t like losing.” He then defended the president’s decision to file a series of lawsuits in battle ground states where the president believes voter fraud has occurred.
Trump has spent months warning about just such a scenario as Democrats sought last-minute changes to the election laws of crucial battleground states in response to the coronavirus panic.
Biden’s campaign, meanwhile, has routinely boasted of its own legion of legal heavy-hitters on hand to challenge outcomes that it disagreed with.
“It should not surprise anybody that there are lawyers and that there are lawsuits,” Mulvaney said, “and it is not a tacit admission of loss, any more than it is a declaration of victory.”
If Biden is declared the lawful victor, though, Trump will accept the results and the peaceful transition of power, Mulvaney said.
“If the process runs, and I expect it to run, and at the end of that process Joe Biden’s the president, you can absolutely guarantee a peaceful transition of power,” he said earlier this week during an interview with CNBC. “I just hope the same is true on the other side.”
