Win or lose, Donald Trump will continue to be a powerful and disruptive force in American politics.

Washington: If President Donald Trump loses his re-election bid, 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 won’t walk away in silence.

Following former Vice President Joe Biden, Trump spent the day trying to discredit the election based on claims of fabricated fraud, hoping to hold on to power or explain a loss. He could find a narrow path to re-election among the states that still count, but he has made it clear that he would not depart from the scene if he lost.

At the very least, he has 76 days left in office to use his power as he sees fit and exact revenge on some of his alleged adversaries. Angered by a defeat, he may fire or sideline a variety of top officials who did not follow through on his wishes as he saw it, including Christopher Wray, the director of the FBI, and Dr. Anthony Fauci, the government’s top infectious disease specialist. in the middle of a pandemic.

And if forced to leave the White House on January 20, Trump is likely to prove more resilient than expected and will almost certainly remain a powerful and disruptive force in American life. It received at least four million more votes than in 2016 and garnered around 48 percent of the popular vote, meaning it retained the support of nearly half the public despite four years of scandal, setbacks, impeachment and the brutal coronavirus outbreak you have had. killed more than 233,000 Americans.

That gives him a power base to play a role that other defeated presidents like Jimmy Carter and George Bush have not. Trump has long toyed with starting his own television network to compete Fox News, and he has recently tackled the idea of ​​running again in 2024 privately, though he would be 78 years old by then. Even if his own days as a candidate are over, his 88 million Twitter followers give him a megaphone 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 to break with Trump for the past four years.

The follow-up may 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 the office, he could attempt to pressure Republican senators who preserved their majority to resist Biden at all times, forcing them to choose between conciliation or crossing their political base.

Until a new generation of Republicans steps forward, Trump could position himself as the de facto party leader, with an extraordinary database of information about his supporters that future candidates would love to rent or otherwise access. The Allies envisioned other Republicans making a pilgrimage to their Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida, seeking their blessing.

“It’s not like his Twitter account or his ability to control a news cycle has stopped,” said Brad Parscale, the president’s first campaign manager in this election cycle. “Trump also has the most data collected by a politician. This will affect careers and policies for years to come. “

Exit polls showed that regardless of prominent Republican defectors like Utah Sen. Mitt Romney and Project Lincoln’s Never Trumpers, Trump enjoyed strong support within his own party, winning 93 percent of voters. republicans. He also fared somewhat better with black voters (12 percent) and Hispanic voters (32 percent) than four years ago despite his often racist rhetoric. And after their high-energy bombardment across the battlefield states, belated voters made their way.

Some of Trump’s arguments carried considerable weight among members of his party. Despite the coronavirus pandemic and the related economic cost, 41 percent of voters said they were doing better than when he took office, compared to just 20 percent who described themselves as worse. Adopting their priorities, 35 percent of voters named the economy the top issue, twice as many as the pandemic. 49 percent said the economy was good or excellent and 48 percent approved of their 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 Nunberg, who was a strategist for the Trump campaign in 2016. “Trump will continue to be a hero within the party. Republican electorate. The winner of the 2024 Republican presidential primaries will be Trump or the candidate closest to him. “

Not all Republicans share that opinion. While Trump will undoubtedly continue to speak and assert on the public stage, they said the party would be happy to try to go beyond him if he loses and it would be remembered as an aberration.

“There will never be another Trump,” said former Florida Representative Carlos Curbelo. Imitators will fail. It will gradually fade, but the scars of this tumultuous period in American history will never fade. “

Indeed, Trump was unable to reproduce his chance success in 2016 when he secured an Electoral College victory even as he lost the popular vote to Hillary Clinton. Despite all the incumbent tools, he couldn’t pick up a single state that he didn’t win the last time, and as of Wednesday, he had lost two or three, with a couple of others still on edge.

Other presidents evicted after a single term or less, such as Gerald Ford in 1976, Carter in 1980 and Bush in 1992, tended to disappear back into the political shadows. Ford briefly contemplated a comeback, Carter occasionally criticized his successors, and Bush campaigned on behalf of his sons, but none of them remained a major political force within his party for long. Politically, at least, each of them was seen to varying degrees as a spent 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 to Franklin D. Roosevelt and became an outspoken leader of the conservative wing of the Republican Party. While he wielded significant influence for years, he did not win back the nomination or change the verdict of history.

For Trump, who cares about “winning, winning, winning” more than anything, being known as a loser would be intolerable. On Election Day, during a visit to his campaign headquarters, he reflected aloud on that. “Winning is easy,” he told reporters and staff members. Losing is never easy. Not for me it is not. “

To avoid that fate, the president tried on Wednesday to convince supporters that the elections were being stolen simply because state and local authorities were counting votes cast legally. Obviously, the fact that it wasn’t true mattered little to him. He was preparing a narrative to justify the legal challenges that even Republican lawyers called unfounded and, should they fail, he set himself up as a martyr who was not disowned by voters, but was somehow stolen by invisible nefarious forces.

Trump himself has a long history at the other end of fraud allegations. Her sister claimed that she got someone else to take her college entrance exam. The daughters of a foot doctor from Queens, New York, claimed their late father gave Trump a bone spur diagnosis to protect him from draft for the Vietnam War as a favor to Fred Trump, his father. And his business dealings have often caught him in indictments and lawsuits.

Young Trump paid $ 25 million to students at his Trump University to resolve the fraud allegations. His charitable foundation was closed after authorities found a “shocking pattern of illegality.” He was involved in dubious tax schemes during the 1990s, including outright fraud cases, according to a New York Times investigation. And Michael Cohen, his divorced attorney and fixer, wrote in a recent book that he rigged two online polls on Trump’s behalf.

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. From his time in real estate and reality shows, he has been part of the country’s pop culture firmament for 30 years, a recurring figure in movies, television shows and his own books.

It has been, for millions, a symbol of golden aspiration and wealth. He was the star of a popular television series for 14 seasons, one that introduced him to the country long before he ran for office. And once he did, his boisterous rallies brought his followers together in a way that underscored what a great cultural phenomenon he is.

For months, as his chances of being reelected dwindled, Trump told advisers, sometimes joking, sometimes not, that if he lost, he would immediately announce that he would run again in 2024. Two advisers said they anticipate he will comply with that. statement if his legal challenges fail and he is defeated, a move that, at the very least, would allow him to raise money to fund the rallies that support him.

When it seemed likely that he would lose his original campaign in 2016, he and some members of his family talked about starting a media property, loosely conceived as “Trump TV.” Some of those discussions have continued this year, according to people familiar with them.

“There is no question that he is one of the most polarizing political figures in modern history,” said Tony Fabrizio, one of Trump’s pollsters. “His followers adore him and his opponents insult him. There is no middle ground with Donald Trump. “

Peter Baker and Maggie Haberman c.2020 The New York Times Company