Steve Bannon predicts Trump will run for president in 2024 if he loses to Biden

Former White House Chief Strategist Steve Bannon exits the Manhattan Federal Court.

(Image credit: Getty Images)

Former White House Chief Strategist Steve Bannon predicted that if President Trump loses re-election in 2020, he'll run again in 2024. "I'll make this prediction right now: If for any reason the election is stolen from, or in some sort of way Joe Biden is declared the winner, Trump will announce he's going to run for re-election in 2024," Bannon told The Australian. "You're not going to see the end of Donald Trump."

Trump, notably, will be 78 in 2024.

Bannon, who also served as Trump's 2016 campaign CEO, previously envisioned Trump's re-election while speaking at an Oct. 10 forum with the Young Republican Federation of Virginia, Salon notes. "At 10 o'clock or 11 o'clock … on Nov. 3, Donald J. Trump is going to walk into the Oval Office, and he may hit a tweet before he goes in there … and he's going to sit there, having won Ohio, and being up in Pennsylvania and Florida, and he's going to say, 'Hey, game's over,'" Bannon said. He explained, "the elites are traumatized. They do not want to go stand in line and vote. That, ladies and gentlemen, is a game-changer."

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Biden remains ahead in the polls, but his own aides have cautioned their team not to get too cocky. "The very searing truth is that Donald Trump can still win this race, and every indication we have shows that this thing is going to come down to the wire," Biden's campaign manager, Jen O'Malley Dillon, wrote in a memo to supporters.

On Friday night, Trump joked that if he loses the election, "I'm not going to feel so good. Maybe I'll have to leave the country, I don't know."

Jeva Lange was the executive editor at TheWeek.com. She formerly served as The Week's deputy editor and culture critic. She is also a contributor to Screen Slate, and her writing has appeared in The New York Daily News, The Awl, Vice, and Gothamist, among other publications. Jeva lives in New York City. Follow her on Twitter.