Donald Trump lost the presidential election of 2020 by approximately 7 million popular votes (46.9 percent to 51.3 percent) and 232 to 306 votes in the Electoral College. He joined a relatively small group of recent US presidents to have served one term and then lost reelection. In 2024, he became only the second US president elected to two non-consecutive terms as president. Trump’s life between his presidential terms was shaped both by the fact that he remained constitutionally eligible to run again and by his unwillingness to accept the legitimacy of his loss.

During the time between the 2020 presidential election in November and the inauguration of Joe Biden on January 20, 2021, Trump perpetuated the falsehood that the election had been “stolen” and that he was the rightful winner, despite the fact that many of his advisors repeatedly told him that he was wrong. He insisted to his supporters that the election was fraudulent and that he could remain in office by undoing the results.

On January 6, 2021, many Trump supporters gathered near the White House to hear the president speak at an event known as the “Stop the Steal” rally. Trump continued to push the false claims that the election was “rigged” and that he won it. He stated that he would "never concede.” He also suggested that Vice President Pence could halt the certification of the Electoral College vote, a procedural formality that was scheduled to take place in the US Capitol building on that day.

For several hours that afternoon, a mob of Trump supporters violently invaded the US Capitol building, threatening to kill members of Congress and their staff, who hid inside. More than a hundred police officers were injured, and several rioters died—one shot by police and several from natural causes. Despite frantic pleas from members of Congress and some of his staff members, Trump refused to condemn or call off the riot, which he watched on television from the White House. Once the Capitol police finally regained control of the building later that night, members of Congress came out of their secure locations and formally voted to affirm the results of the Electoral College, making Joe Biden officially the president-elect.

In the aftermath of that attack, major social media companies blocked Trump’s accounts, and the House of Representatives impeached him for a second time. Even after Trump left office, fallout from the attack continued. The House of Representatives convened a Select Committee to investigate the January 6 attack on the US Capitol. Throughout 2022, Americans watched the January 6 hearings to learn more about what transpired.

In a departure from recent tradition, Trump did not attend the inauguration of his successor, Joe Biden. He thus became only the fifth outgoing president (apart from those who died in office) to conduct such a boycott, and the first since Richard Nixon, who resigned the presidency in 1974 and did not witness the oath of office of his successor Gerald Ford. The other three were one-term presidents in the 19th century (John Adams, John Quincy Adams, and Andrew Johnson). In addition to violating a standard norm of presidential politics, Trump’s refusal to attend Biden’s inauguration or acknowledge the legitimacy of his electoral victory marked a strike against the long-held tradition of the peaceful transfer of power that is vital to democratic governance.

Trump relocated to Mar-a-Lago, his home in in Palm Beach, Florida, when his first presidential term expired. The beginning of his post-presidency witnessed his second impeachment trial in the United States Senate. One week after January 6, the House of Representatives impeached Trump for incitement of insurrection. The Senate trial began on February 9. Republican senator Rand Paul motioned to dismiss the trial at the outset on the grounds that Trump was out of office. Supporters of the trial noted that a guilty vote in the Senate would bar him from running for president again, and the Senate voted 55 to 45 to conduct the trial. 

Trump’s legal defense argued that Trump’s speech to the protestors on January 6 had been standard political rhetoric and accused Trump’s opponents of seeking “political vengeance.” Later the House Committee investigations revealed that Trump knew both that the election results were legitimate and that rioters on January 6 were armed and intended to commit violence, and that he personally wished to join the assault on the Capitol. That information was not presented at the Senate trial. The Senate ultimately voted 57 to 43 to convict Trump of inciting insurrection, ten votes fewer than needed for the conviction to stand. He therefore remained eligible to seek the presidency again. All Democrats (and Democratic-leaning independents) as well as seven Republican senators voted against Trump.

Without access to social media accounts like Twitter, Trump experimented with a range of start-up social media platforms and frequently issued commentary on political affairs via standard press release. He remained politically active, raising donations from supporters, campaigning for various office seekers in advance of the 2022 midterm elections, and actively criticizing President Biden, the Democratic Party, and Republicans whom he determined were insufficiently loyal to him or the “Make America Great Again” (MAGA) agenda. 

In November 2022, Trump announced that he was running for the GOP nomination in the 2024 presidential election. As the 2024 Republican primary got underway, almost a dozen candidates threw their hats in the ring, including Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida, former governor of South Carolina, Nikki Haley, and former governor of New Jersey, Chris Christie. Despite all the competition, Trump won almost all of the GOP primaries and became the presumptive Republican nominee in March 2024 and was officially nominated in July. He was reelected in November 2024 and re-inaugurated on January 20, 2025.

At the start of his second term, Trump became the first president to take office as a felon. In May 2024, a jury in New York City found former President Trump guilty on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records. The case was known as the hush money case, and it alleged that in October 2016, Trump had one of his lawyers, Michael Cohen, pay a porn star, Stormy Daniels, to keep quiet about a sexual liaison she claimed to have had with Trump in 2006. The prosecution argued that Trump used fraudulent business practices for the purpose of interfering with the outcome of the 2016 presidential election by misleading voters. The jury agreed with the prosecution, finding him guilty on all 34 counts.

In the wake of Trump’s reelection in November 2024, the judge sentenced him to an unconditional discharge: his conviction stood, but the judge imposed no requirements for the sentencing—no jail time, no fines, and no probation or community service. Trump announced his intent to appeal the conviction.