Former White House chief of staff says Trump won't run in 2024 because he can't 'be seen as a loser'
- The former White House chief of staff John Kelly seems skeptical Donald Trump will run in 2024.
- The former president continues to hint at a second bid for the White House.
As former President Donald Trump continues to tease a campaign to return to the White House, some of his former allies seem skeptical he'll enter the 2024 presidential race.
John Kelly, Trump's longest-serving White House chief of staff, is the latest to express doubts that Trump will run for the executive seat again.
In an interview with The Atlantic published Tuesday, Kelly told The Atlantic that he thought Trump would continue to tease a run leading up to campaigning season but in the end would not follow through.
"Trump won't run," Kelly told the publication. "He'll continue talking about it; he may even declare, but he will not run. And the reason is he simply cannot be seen as a loser."
A representative for the Trump Organization did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Insider.
After leaving his position at the White House in 2019, Kelly rarely criticized Trump during the president's remaining time in office. But the retired Marine Corps general has been openly critical of Trump since the January 6 Capitol attack.
Kelly told the ABC News correspondent Jonathan Karl that if Trump "was a real man, he would go down to the Capitol and tell them to stop," referring to the mob of rioters who breached the Capitol early this year. His comments were included in Karl's book "Betrayal: The Final Act of the Trump Show," which was released earlier this month and details the tumultuous final year of Trump's presidency.
Trump made headlines last weekend when he once again hinted at a 2024 run.
"I think if I run, I'll get it," he said in a Fox Business interview. "Look, I have a 94, 95% even, in the CPAC, I had a 98% approval rating. So if I decide to run, I'll get it very easily."
"Most people have said if I run, they won't run against me, so I think that's good," he added.
Trump began seeking to cast doubt on the integrity of the 2020 US presidential election months before it took place. After he lost to Joe Biden by nearly 7 million votes, he spread the false narrative of a stolen election, and he and his allies made dozens of legal attempts to overturn the loss, all of which failed.
Kelly is not the first former Trump associate to speculate that the 2020 loss — or the possibility of another — could keep him from trying again.
The former national security advisor John Bolton and Trump's former lawyer Michael Cohen have made similar predictions.
"I think he knows deep inside, although he will never admit it, he did lose in 2020 and very much fears losing in 2024," Bolton said last month, "because if he hates anything in the world, he hates being called a loser."