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Kevin Cramer called Don­ald Trump last week to con­vey his sup­port for the president’s efforts to con­test the elec­tion results when Trump dropped a casu­al aside that snapped the North Dako­ta sen­a­tor to attention.

“If this doesn’t work out, I’ll just run again in four years,” Trump said.

Cramer could only chuck­le at the pres­i­dent mus­ing about the next pres­i­den­tial race while he’s still in office. But to the line­up of Repub­li­can hope­fuls with their eyes on becom­ing the GOP’s post-Trump stan­dard bear­er, the president’s remark was no laugh­ing matter.

While Trump’s loss was sup­posed to trig­ger a Repub­li­can Par­ty reset, his flir­ta­tion with a 2024 bid ensures he’ll remain the dom­i­nant force in the par­ty and cast a shad­ow over any­one look­ing to suc­ceed him. Even the pos­si­bil­i­ty of Trump run­ning again will impede oth­er Repub­li­cans from lay­ing ground­work for their own bids — lest they upset Trump and his tens of mil­lions of sup­port­ers, many of whom are con­vinced the elec­tion was stolen.