Trump ‘has told aides he’ll announce 2024 candidacy as soon as Biden certified winner’

Donald Trump has told aides that if Joe Biden is certified as the winner of the election he could announce his plans to run in 2024, according to The New York Times.

The president is holed up in the White House, coming to the reluctant conclusion that his presidency is coming to an end, the paper reported.

“He knows it’s over,” one adviser told The New York Times.

The paper spoke to half a dozen advisers and others close to Mr Trump, who said that 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.

A president cannot serve more than two terms, but those terms do not need to be consecutive.

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The only president in history to serve two nonconsecutive terms is Grover Cleveland, the first Democrat elected after the Civil War, who served as the 22nd and 24th president.

On Wednesday several of Mr Trump’s advisers told him that his chances of changing the election result through the courts were extremely low.

Axios first reported on Monday that Mr Trump, 74, was considering running again in 2024 – which would make him even older than Mr Biden, 77, the oldest president ever elected, if he took office.

Republicans are already jockeying for position for the 2024 contest, with Mike Pompeo, secretary of state, making a very deliberate ploy to keep the Trump supporters on his side.

John Kasich, the former governor of Ohio who campaigned for Joe Biden, and Ted Cruz, the Texas senator who like Mr Kasich challenged Mr Trump for the 2016 nomination, are also said to be in the mix.

Can Trump run again in 2024 after losing election to Biden?

Nikki Haley, Mr Trump’s former UN ambassador, has long been rumoured to have her eye on the White House, and Donald Trump Jr, 42, is seen as increasingly keen to carry the Trump mantle into the future.

Mr Trump is also reportedly considering starting his own streaming media channel to compete directly with Fox News, Axios reported on Thursday, according to sources with knowledge of the plans.

The news comes as Mr Trump has increasingly directed criticism at the outlet, which escalated last week after the network was the first to call the state of Arizona for Biden.

Michael Wolff in his book Fire and Fury wrote that Mr Trump never expected to win in 2016, and instead planned to set up his own television network to rival Fox.