Donald Trump said in an interview released on Sunday that he did not think he would run for president again in 2028 if he loses this year’s race for the White House.

In an interview on the Full Measure television show with Sharyl Attkisson, the former US president – who ran in 2016 and 2020 – was asked whether he saw himself running yet again in four years time.

“No, I don’t,” Trump answered. “I don’t see that at all.”

He said: “Hopefully, we’re going to be successful.”

In the polls the vice-president, Kamala Harris, leads Trump in most head-to-head surveys after Trump had previously established a solid lead over Joe Biden – before he scotched his re-election campaign in the wake of a disastrous debate performance. But the presidential race remains tight ahead of November’s election, especially in the key battleground states that will hold the key to victory.

Attkisson asked Trump what positions he saw people like the tech billionaire Elon Musk, the former Democratic congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard and the ex-independent presidential candidate Robert F Kennedy Jr, holding in his administration. Trump said he had not made deals with anybody because “it’s not appropriate to do it” and “it’s too early”.

Still, he laid out what Musk, Gabbard and Kennedy, who are all former Democrats or supporters of the party, could potentially work on if he were to be elected.

“Bobby will do great on health and on the environment,” he said. “He looks at other countries where they don’t use chemicals, where they use much less than we use, and the people are healthier than they are in the United States, which is not that healthy a country.”

Kennedy has been campaigning for Trump since he ended his own independent presidential bid to support the Republican nominee.

Trump described Gabbard, a military veteran who served as a Democratic congresswoman from Hawaii before retiring, as “a common sense person”. She recently said she would “be honored to serve” under a second Trump administration. Gabbard ran for president as a Democrat in 2020, but chose to support the Republican nominee in this year’s elections.

During a Fox News interview, Gabbard said she was aiming for a role working on foreign policy.

“I’ve known her a little bit, and it was a great honor when we got her,” Trump said in Sunday’s interview.

Last month, both Gabbard and Kennedy were appointed to Trump’s transition team, which would help the former president choose policies and personnel if he were to win White House in November.

Trump praised Musk as a person who can advance policies to cut costs in the federal government, an idea he has raised along with a “government efficiency commission”.

“Elon is Elon,” he said. “He’s a big cost-cutter. He’s always been very good at it, and I’m good at it. But Elon, I’ll tell you what, he will go in, and he’ll say, ‘this is what you have to do. You have to do this.’ He is so into that, he feels there’s so much waste and fat in this country, and he’s right.”