When you announce a presidential run, you typically want to establish yourself as the front-runner by having some momentum behind you and demonstrating broad support from within your party. You certainly don’t want to do it off a stunning electoral failure you’re being widely blamed for, with members of your own party attacking you, and people in your inner circle advising you to delay the announcement.

But this is Donald Trump we’re talking about. Could it have gone any other way?

Trump defiantly announced his 2024 presidential campaign yesterday, a week after a disappointing GOP midterm election performance led his own advisers to urge him to delay the announcement. Having planned to take credit for what he thought would be a Republican landslide that never happened, Trump was in a bind: delay the event, looking weak and tacitly admitting the election didn’t go his way, or barrel ahead with it anyway, pissing off the Republican establishment while insisting everything was going great. For anyone who’s watched Trump the past six years, there was never any doubt what he’d do.