On Saturday morning, the Associated Press, CBS News, and several other news outlets projected that former Vice President Joe Biden would become the 46th President of the United States. These outlets made the call after returns from Pennsylvania came in that indicated that Biden would win the state and subsequently push him over the 270 electoral vote threshold to win the presidency. It should be noted that this is a projection and votes are still being counted in multiple states across the country. What does this mean for President Donald Trump? Well, the sitting president has already vowed to challenge the election decision in court and has called for a recount in states such as Wisconsin, which turned blue in 2020 and helped deliver Biden the win. Even though Trump has reportedly lost the presidency, there is still a chance that he could run for the same office again in 2024.
Under the 22nd Amendment to the United States Constitution, an individual can not serve more than two terms as president. However, there is nowhere that states that those two terms have to be served consecutively. While it’s possible that someone, like Trump, could run for president again after being unseated during their first term, it is not something that has happened often throughout history. (There have only been a few cases when an incumbent president is unseated during their first term.) Although it is certainly possible to serve two terms non-consecutively, just as Grover Cleveland, the 22nd and 24th president, did in the 1800s. Trump’s former acting Chief of Staff, Mick Mulvaney, fully expects the president to stay in the political sphere and that he could possibly run for president again in 2024, per the Irish Times.
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“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,” Mulvaney said during a webinar hosted by a Dublin think tank. During the event, he added that he wasn’t surprised that Trump was already engaging in legal challenges in many of these battleground states. He also said that it would be “crazy” to suggest that the president is trying to stage a coup of sorts to remain in his position. Mulvaney continued, “It should not surprise anybody that there are lawyers and that there are lawsuits and it is not a tacit admission of loss, any more than it is a declaration of victory.”
