What's Next For Trump?

Bankruptcy and criminal charges loom, but insiders say The Donald wants to run for office again in 2024

- Jane Vorster

For someone who never really intended to become president, he seems rather reluctant to relinquish the position.

Instead of making the traditional concession speech, graciously starting a hand over of power and trying to ensure a smooth transition from one administration to the next, he’s doing everything he can to hold on to his seat on the top of the US political pile.

There are plenty of reasons Donald Trump won’t go quietly as others have done before him, experts say. Ego, financial problems and a fear of the law are among the factors that prevent him conceding to Joe Biden.

“There’s nothing about him that goes gently into the night,” history professor Douglas Brinkley told The Atlantic magazine. “He has bathed in the fountain of real power and he’s going to want to again. He doesn’t want to become a third-rate, has-been figure.”

In Trump’s view, the worst thing you can call anyone is “a loser”, says Michael Wolff, who wrote Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House , the best-selling book about the Trump presidency.

“There’s no real question in anyone’s mind about whether he’s lost the presidency – he has. But the issue is about whether he’s capable of hearing or willing to hear. In one sense he’s a dying patient – but he’s not ready to hear the prognosis.”

“The fighting allows him to deny the reality of the loss,” Jack O’Donnell, who worked for Trump as president of the Trump Plaza Hotel and Casino, told Politico.com. “His ego and narcissism don’t allow him to say, ‘I’ve lost’. I believe he will maintain forever that it was unfair.”