Australia and the World Past and Present

He didn’t realise it at the time, but Donald Trump probably benefited from losing the 2020 presidential election.

He wasn’t happy that he lost. In fact he doesn’t even concede that he lost. He has long claimed that the election was stolen from him.

So, 4 more years back at Mar-a-Lago.

4 more years in the political wilderness – well, relatively speaking.

But, here is how he benefited.

Presidential terms are for 4 years. And presidents can only serve 2 terms. They can be consecutive (and most are), or they can be non-consecutive. In the case of Donald Trump, his 2 administrations did not run back-to-back.

Now, many people will say that this is not as good as serving consecutive terms.

But here’s the thing. It extended the period of time over which Trump began and ended his presidency. In a way, he has been more powerful for longer because of it.

If he had served back-to-back terms, his stint would already be over. We would now be in a post-Trump world.

Although Trump didn’t win in 2020, he didn’t disappear from the scene altogether. In fact, he remained prominent. There were legal prosecutions that delivered him masses of publicity. There was always the question of whether he would run again in 2024. There was speculation after speculation.

His current term began at the start of last year. He still has around 3 years to go.

Already in his second term, he has signed a large volume of executive orders, dispatched the National Guard to U.S. cities, ramped up ICE enforcement, enacted oodles of tariff changes, ordered the kidnapping of a foreign president, ordered strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities, greenlighted the killing of Iran’s supreme leader. The list goes on and on.

Whether you agree with Trump’s actions or not, he has been hugely influential.

To date, it may not have been conventional wisdom in Washington D.C., but in terms of staying power and cementing the legacy that you want to leave behind, non-consecutive terms may be better than a straight run.