Well firstly he didn’t mean to win a first term, he was having a laugh and Republicans had no better option for the nomination, so he hijacked the party one day when his regular ego masseuse had to to fulfil a booking from Ghislaine Maxwell at Epstein's, then he got gifted the Presidency when the Dems put up the most dislikeable candidate in history who still got a majority of the vote but Trump fluked it on the electoral college system, so he told himself he could still get away with it for 4 years before anyone noticed, but no longer, he’s not nearly as stupid as his base.
Secondly, The DoJ confirmed a president couldn’t pardon himself when Nixon’s lawyer suggested it during Watergate. Trump knows he just hasn’t been caught red-handed doing a myriad of illegal stuff yet because he can pardon everyone around him who has got themselves busted through carelessness and they aren’t dobbing in the bloke who holds their get out of jail card, but he can’t pardon himself. So Trump has to bow out ungracefully (claiming voter fraud, like USPS have some kind of partiality, when all they got is completely impartial incompetence), so he gets pardoned by the next guy/girl who he gives his blessing to, like Pence or Nikki Haley, or any random genuine Republican you can think of who actually has a hope of beating a senile charisma-free yesterday’s man past his sell by date promoting economic suicide whose memory is do shot he can’t remember his VP pick calling him a racist to his face and a light fingered sexual predator behind his back.
