We already know what Donald Trump does when he loses: He acts like it never happened.

When Donald Trump loses, he lashes out, assigns blame and does whatever it takes to make a defeat look like a win. When that isn’t plausible, he pronounces the system rigged — victory wasn’t possible because someone put in the fix.

In a roller-coaster career in which glittering buildings and a flamboyant lifestyle have been tempered by bankruptcies and failed ventures, Trump has consistently fought — often successfully — to recast each defeat as proof of his strategic savvy. He has reacted to failure by exploding in anger and recrimination, then moving on to very different ventures, though always in arenas where he can vie for public admiration.

Trump calls defeats “blips.” Losing the race for the most powerful job on the planet is no one’s idea of a blip, and if that happens, Trump is highly unlikely to slip away and accept life as a historical footnote, as Michael Dukakis did; to live out his golden years as a respected elder statesman, as Bob Dole has done; or to consider some other form of government service, as John Kerry did.

Psychologists who study how sports fans shield themselves from the pain of their favorite team’s defeats use the term “CORFing” — “cutting off reflected failure” — to describe a defense mechanism by which fans separate themselves from loss by reframing their relationship to the team. “We lost” becomes “they lost.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2016/11/03/what-does-donald-trump-do-when-he-loses-he-acts-like-it-never-happened/