Trump 'next president,' 'lesson of history is clear,' says Niall Ferguson

History indicates that former President Donald Trump is likely to win his bid for the White House in 2024, according to historian Niall Ferguson, a Hoover Institution senior fellow and Harvard senior fellow. 

Donald Trump is "the next president," Ferguson wrote Saturday in The Spectator. 

Ferguson said that Democratic strategists think President Joe Biden will always beat Trump and the former president's legal troubles will tank his 2024 chances. "Yet the campaign of lawfare against Trump has already started to backfire," he writes.

Other major candidates have been indicted or faced legal trouble and still won their elections, such as Brazil's President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Malaysia's Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim. 

"If Lula can come back from one-and-a-half years in jail to win, Trump may have little to worry about, as there isn’t the slightest chance of his being locked up between now and election day next year. Indeed, the perception that Democratic operatives are using the legal system for political ends will likely help him win votes," Ferguson also wrote.

Republicans have historically elected their front-runner candidates in the primary to go on to the general election, which is a good sign for Trump as he is far ahead of all other candidates in hypothetical polls, Ferguson said. Another factor that could work in Trump's favor is the economy. 

"[T]he lesson of history is clear – the Republican frontrunner usually wins the nomination, and a post-recession incumbent usually loses the presidential election," Ferguson wrote.

"A second Trump act is not just possible. It’s fast becoming my base case," he concluded.

Madeleine Hubbard is an international correspondent for Just the News. Follow her on Twitter or Instagram.