DONALD Trump’s increasingly Alice-in-Wonderland approach to the US presidential election – he plainly likes to assert six impossible things before breakfast – reached a surreal nadir at the third debate, in Las Vegas.

Mr Trump is extremely competitive and, despite his handlers’ best efforts, frequently says the first thing that comes into his head, regardless of the consequences. His followers admire this habit as proof that he is really one of them: meanwhile, the rest of the US, and the watching wider world, stares in horrified fascination. Thus it was on Wednesday, when Mr Trump, as belligerent and thin-skinned as ever, said he would keep the country “in suspense” over whether he would accept the election outcome. Immediately afterwards, however, his campaign manager, Kellyanne Conway, said breezily that he “will accept the results of the election because he’s going to win the election, so they’ll be easy to accept.”

The original statement contradicted not only his running-mate, Mike Pence, but also Mr Trump himself, who in the first debate said he would “absolutely support” Hillary Clinton if she won. He has also claimed that the election is rigged and that a gigantic conspiracy involving the media and his own party is undermining him. All of this is an attempt to deflect attention from his own erratic campaigning. The Clinton campaign manager, Robbie Mook, says Mr Trump, aware he is losing, seeks to blame the system. Mrs Clinton herself says the refusal to accept the outcome is “horrifying.”

Mr Trump is uniquely unqualified to occupy the Oval Office, but his campaign of division, arrogance, bullying and freely-expressed contempt does not augur well for the post-election period. Many Trump supporters might be vehemently disinclined to accept a Clinton victory. What happens then?