How does this all end for Donald Trump?

Short answer: It doesn't.

Imagine it’s May 2024. Ron DeSantis has secured the delegates necessary to become the Republican presidential nominee at the party convention later in the summer. The party has begun to coalesce behind him.

And Donald Trump? Can you imagine a scenario where the former president bows to this emerging political reality and just, well, leaves the race?

Yeah, me neither.

Which is a major problem for Republicans. And one to which they have no obvious solution.

Consider what we know about Trump’s record of handling losing.

In the 2016 Iowa caucuses, he lost to Texas Sen. Ted Cruz. To which Trump responded thusly: “Ted Cruz didn’t win Iowa, he illegally stole it. That is why all of the polls were so wrong any [sic] why he got more votes than anticipated. Bad!”

Trump added that “either a new election should take place or Cruz results nullified.” He also said he would “probably” sue. Spoiler Alert: He never sued.

After winning — repeat: winning — the 2016 general election over Hillary Clinton, Trump again cried foul. He said he would have won the popular vote “if you deduct the millions of people who voted illegally” and repeatedly insisted that there was evidence that between 3 and 5 million illegal votes were cast in the race. He never provided said evidence.

And then there’s the 2020 election, which Trump has spent the last 2 years disputing — relying on a variety of conspiracy theories to “prove” his point. He even helped rile up the mob that marched on the U.S. Capitol on January 6 — fueled by false election claims.

“Winning is easy,” Trump said once during the 2020 campaign. “Losing is never easy. Not for me it’s not.”

That is an understatement. Losing is, in Trump, world, an impossibility.

“In the world of sports as in politics as in business as in his personal life, the same rules apply,” explained Marc Fisher, who wrote “Trump Revealed” about the former president. “You are either a winner or a loser. If you are a loser you barely have any reason to live.”

If you are a loser, you barely have any reason to live.

Consider that sentiment in the context of the coming presidential campaign. There is no doubt that Trump starts as the race’s frontrunner although he looks likely to face a real challenge from DeSantis — and maybe others.

While the most likely scenario is that Trump wins, it’s also plausible that, well, he doesn’t.

Which brings Republicans to a major dilemma: How can they get Trump out of a race he has demonstrably lost?

If past is prologue, they can’t. Trump isn’t beholden to or afraid of the party establishment. There’s nothing they can threaten to do to him that will alter his intended course. He does what he wants when he wants to do it.

Which should have Republicans panicking. Especially when you consider the results of Bulwark poll released earlier this week — which showed that 28% of GOP primary voters saying they would support Trump even if he ran as an independent in the general election.

That 28% would almost certainly cost DeSantis —or whoever emerged as the Republican nominee for president — the White House. Hell, half that amount of support for a Trump third party bid would sink the GOP nominee.

If you think I’m being too much of an alarmist here, then answer me this: How does Donald Trump get out of the 2024 race if he doesn’t win? As in: What would it look like for Trump to bow out of the contest?

You can’t tell me. And that’s because — at least in part — we have never seen it before. In his 7 years in politics, Trump has never admitted a defeat — much less defeat in the broader sense of the word.

When he loses, it’s because someone cheated him out of it. He always believes himself to be the rightful winner — even when objective facts make clear that’s not the case.

Given all of that, I just can’t imagine Trump gracefully leaving the GOP primary if he winds up not winning. It’s just not what he does.

The best Republicans can hope for — I think — is an unhappy but not aggressively malicious Trump as a neutral to slightly negative force in the general election.

The worst case scenario is an active third party run, which would effectively end GOP chances of winning back the White House next November.