President Trump is “likely to run in 2024” if the ongoing vote-counting process shows that he lost reelection, but the fight over the election may continue until the weekend before the inauguration, according to a former White House adviser-turned-U.S. diplomat.
“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,” former acting White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney told the Dublin-based Institute of International & European Affairs. “He doesn’t like losing.”
That comment dovetails with an assessment from another former Trump campaign adviser, although Mulvaney’s prognostication carries additional weight given how closely he has worked with Trump and his current role as the president’s special envoy for Northern Ireland. That role places Mulvaney in the midst of negotiations between the United Kingdom and the European Union over the terms of the British departure from the continental bloc.
Despite the shrinking timeline for negotiations between the U.K and EU, conversations kept returning the U.S. elections, which the envoy suggested could remain in doubt for weeks.
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“There’s a better than average chance … this doesn’t get resolved until late November, early December,” he said when asked if the U.K. should delay proceeding with certain negotiations until after the election results.
The outcome could be in doubt until the weekend before the inauguration, he added. “But seriously, if you’re the British government and you want a deal by the end of the year, what if you don’t know who the president is going to be until Jan. 15?” Mulvaney said. “That could be a self-defeating sort of assumption.”
The acrimony over the election season could continue even longer. “Are either of these two leaders likely to unite the country? No,” Mulvaney said during the webinar. “Donald Trump — that’s not his style, that’s not his personality. I don’t think he’s interested in uniting the country, at least in the way that other folks would define it.”
Former Vice President Joe Biden has greater personal potential to do so, in Mulvaney’s estimation, but will be stymied in that effort by his Democratic allies. “Joe Biden is absolutely capable of it individually, but his party has zero interest in doing it,” Mulvaney said.
Still, the former White House adviser urged European observers not to have any doubt about the resilience and integrity of the U.S. political system.
“There will be a peaceful transition or retention of power come Jan. 20, period, end of story,” he said. “Could things get really sloppy and messy and slow between now and then? Absolutely … on one hand, 70 million people supported one candidate, and 68 million or whatever it is supported the other. They feel an obligation to those folks to fight this out to the very end, which I absolutely expect from both candidates.”
