Donald Trump plans to announce 2024 candidacy for president once Joe Biden is certified winner

Ever since the 2020 presidential election was called for Joe Biden, Donald Trump has claimed that the election was "rigged" and full of fraud even though there has been absolutely no evidence. Trump tweeted that "he [Biden] won" because of faulty equipment and untrustworthy vote tabulation systems.

However, it seems that, at least on some level, Trump has accepted the results of the election because the Independent reports that he is already planning to run for president again in 2024. 

Trump has reportedly "told aides that if Joe Biden is certified as the winner of the election he could announce plans to run in 2024." Right now, the president is apparently "holed up in the White House, coming to the reluctant conclusion that his presidency is coming to an end," as reported by The New York Times. 

One advisor said simply, "He knows it's over." Although, that's not what his most recent tweets suggest. He is still publicly claiming that he won, even though he lost the popular vote by more than five million votes and the electoral college by a large margin. 

It's clear to many that the president is grasping at straws to try and hold on to any sort of claim to victory. According to the advisors to Trump who spoke to the Times, "the president has no masterplan to fight the inevitable, but is instead hoping to maintain support from his base as he considers what he will do once he leaves the Oval Office."

In short, he seems to be considering another run for president entirely to preserve his "brand." Axios reported that he is also considering starting his own streaming media channel "to compete directly with Fox News."

Can Trump run for president again in 2024? Technically, yes. A president can serve no more than two terms, but they don't have to be consecutive. 

There has only been one president in history to serve nonconsecutive terms. That was Grover Cleveland, after the Civil War. He was our 22nd and 24th president. So it's not illegal for Trump to run again in 2024. But his advisors have told him that his chances of winning again are "extremely low."

Many have started speculating why Trump might want to run for the presidency again in 2024 despite the fact that it's clear to many that he didn't want to be president in the first place. 

"Watch. As soon as Biden is declared winner, Trump will announce a 2024 candidacy and then say that any legal attempts to prosecute him are election tampering, and his lawyers will be claiming that his immunity from his presidency magically extends to his candidacy as well," one person wrote on Reddit.

"He wants to make any of the upcoming investigations into him seem like the Democrats are attacking a current presidential candidate, therefore making the investigation seem entirely political and illegitimate..." another person wrote. 

Several news outlets have reported that Donald Trump will be vulnerable to different criminal investigations once he leaves office. The Intercept writes, "Trump is more vulnerable to prosecution than other presidents because he's engaged in so many potential nontraditional presidential crimes." 

If Donald Trump decides to run again in 2024, it will allow him to claim that he is immune to investigation, and it will keep a steady stream of donations rolling in. Whatever the reason, it seems like Donald Trump's potential 2024 run for president has little to do with him actually wanting to be president.