Win or lose, Trump will remain a powerful and disruptive force
Even if he is defeated, the president has made it clear that he will not withdraw from the stage.
If President Donald Trump loses his bid for re-election, as seemed increasingly likely on Wednesday, it would be the first defeat for a sitting president in 28 years. But one thing seemed certain: win or lose, he will not walk away quietly.
Trailing former Vice President Joe Biden, Trump spent the day trying to discredit the election based on fabricated claims of fraud in the hopes of clinging to power or justifying defeat. He could find a narrow path to reelection in the states that follow in the count, but he has made it clear that if he lost, he will not walk away from the political scene.
She has at least 75 days left in office to use his power as she sees fit and to exact revenge on some of his alleged adversaries. Angered by a loss, he may fire or sideline a number of senior officials who, in his perception, did not carry out his wishes, including Christopher A. Wray, the director of the FBI, and Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, the chief. government infectious disease specialist in the midst of a pandemic.
And if he is forced to leave the White House on January 20, Trump is likely to prove more resilient than expected, and he will almost certainly remain a powerful and disruptive force in American life. It received at least 68 million votes, five more than in 2016 and has obtained around 48 percent of the popular vote, which means that it retained the support of almost half of the people despite four years of scandals, setbacks, trial politician and the brutal coronavirus outbreak that has killed more than 233,000 Americans.
That gives him a power base to play a role that other defeated presidents after a term, like Jimmy Carter and George Bush, did not have. Trump has long flirted with setting up his own television network to compete with Fox News, and has recently floated the idea of a re-run in 2024 privately, although he would be 78 by then. Even if his days as his candidate are over, his 88 million Twitter followers give him the opportunity to be an influential voice on the right, potentially making him a king-maker among rising Republicans.
"If anything is clear from the election results, it is that the president has a large following and has no intention of leaving the stage anytime soon," said former Arizona Senator Jeff Flake, one of the few Republican officials who has broken with Trump in the last four years.
Such supporters can allow Trump to win a second term and four years to try to rebuild the economy and reshape the Republican Party in his image. But even from outside office, he could try to pressure the Republican senators who retain the majority to resist Biden at all times, forcing them to choose between conciliation or angering his political base.
As a new generation of Republicans arrives, Trump could position himself as the de facto leader of the party, wielding an extraordinary database of information about his supporters that future candidates would love to rent or access in some way. The president's allies have envisioned other Republicans making a pilgrimage to his property at Mar-a-Lago in Florida, seeking his blessing.
"It's not like his Twitter account or his ability to control the news cycle is going to stop," said Brad Parscale, the president's first campaign manager this election cycle. President Trump also has the most data ever collected by a politician. This will impact careers and politics for years to come. "
Exit polls showed that despite prominent Republican defectors such as Utah Sen. Mitt Romney and the Lincoln Project 'never-Trumpists', Trump enjoyed strong support within his own party, winning 93 by percent of Republican voters. And despite his often racist rhetoric, he also fared slightly better than four years ago with black (12 percent) and Hispanic (32 percent) voters. And after a vigorous campaign in key contested states, voters who made up their minds at the last minute turned to him.
Some of Trump's arguments carried considerable weight among members of his party. Despite the coronavirus pandemic and the ensuing financial cost, 41 percent of voters said they were doing better than when he took office, compared to just 20 percent who said they were doing worse. Adopting the president's priorities, 35 percent of voters named the economy as the most important issue, twice as many as the pandemic. Forty-nine percent said the economy was good or excellent, and 48 percent approved of his government's handling of the virus.
"If he is defeated, the president will retain the eternal loyalty of the party's voters and the new voters he brought into the party," said Sam Nuremberg, who was a strategist in the Trump campaign in 2016. "President Trump will remain a hero. within the Republican electorate. The winner of the 2024 Republican presidential primaries will be President Trump or the candidate most similar to him. "
Not all Republicans share that opinion. While Trump will undoubtedly continue to speak out and assert himself on the public stage, they said the party would be happy to try to top him if he loses and it will be remembered as an aberration.
"There will never be another Trump," said former Representative Carlos Curbelo of Florida. Imitators will fail. It will gradually fade, but the scars of this tumultuous period in American history will never fade. "
In fact, Trump failed to reproduce his unexpected success of 2016, when he secured an Electoral College victory, even when he lost the popular vote for Hillary Clinton. Despite all the tools he has at his disposal as president, he failed to conquer a single state that he had not won last time, and as of Wednesday he had lost two or three, with a pair yet to be defined.
Other presidents removed after a single term or less — such as Gerald R. Ford in 1976, Carter in 1980, and Bush in 1992 — tended to fade into political shadows. Ford briefly contemplated a comeback, Carter occasionally criticized his successors, and Bush campaigned for his sons, but neither of them remained a major political force within his party. At least politically, each of them was seen to varying degrees as a depleted force.
The last defeated president to attempt a power broker role after leaving office was Herbert Hoover, who positioned himself to run again after his 1932 defeat at the hands of Franklin D. Roosevelt and became an outspoken leader of the conservative wing of the Republican Party. Although he exercised significant influence for years, he did not win the nomination again or change the verdict of the story.
For Trump, who cares about "winning, winning, winning" more than anything else, it would be intolerable to be known as a loser. On election day, during a visit to his campaign headquarters, he reflected aloud on the issue. "Winning is easy," he told reporters and staff. Losing is never easy. For me no, it is not ”.
To avoid that fate, the president on Wednesday sought to convince his supporters that the election was being stolen simply because state and local authorities were counting legally cast ballots. That that was not true evidently mattered little to him. He was putting together a narrative to justify the legal disputes that even Republican lawyers had said were unfounded and that, if he failed, they would present him as a martyr who was not repudiated by voters but was somehow stripped of victory by force. nefarious and invisible.
Trump has a history of having been on the other side of fraud allegations. His sister said she got someone else to take her college entrance exam. The daughters of a Queens podiatrist say his late father diagnosed Trump with bone spurs to prevent him from being called up to serve in the Vietnam War as a favor to Fred Trump, the president's father. And his business dealings have often involved him in lawsuits and complaints.
Young Trump paid $ 25 million to students at his Trump University to hush up fraud allegations. His charitable foundation was shut down after authorities found a "surprising pattern of illegality." He participated in dubious tax schemes during the 1990s, including some outright fraud cases, according to an investigation by The New York Times. And Michael D. Cohen, his attorney and problem solver, wrote in a recent book that he rigged two online polls in favor of Trump.
The president has survived all of that and a series of bankruptcies and other failures through a lifetime of celebrity and populist appeals that gave him the aura of a winner that he nurtured. Since his days in real estate and on television, he has been part of the nation's pop culture firmament for 30 years, a recurring figure in movies, television shows and in his own books.
He has been, for millions, a symbol of aspiration and dream wealth. He was the star of a popular television series for 14 seasons, which introduced him to the country long before he ran for president. And once he did, his boisterous rallies brought his fans together with him in a way that underscored just how much he is a cultural phenomenon.
For months, as his chances of being re-elected dwindled, Trump told his advisers - sometimes jokingly, sometimes not - that if he lost, he would quickly announce that he would run again in 2024. Two advisers said they anticipate that he will abide by that. statement if his legal challenges fail and he is defeated, a move that, if nothing else, would allow him to raise money to fund the rallies for which he lives.
When it seemed likely that he would lose his 2016 campaign, he and some of his family members talked about starting a media company, loosely conceived as Trump TV. Some of those discussions have continued into this year, according to people who know them.
"There is no doubt that he is one of the greatest polarizing political figures in modern history," said Tony Fabrizio, one of Trump's pollsters. “His supporters adore him and his opponents vilify him. There is no middle ground with Donald Trump. "
