It's also likely that if he had won the 2020 election, his second term wouldn't have been like this, since he wouldn't be so aggrieved. It would likely have been more like his first term, where he was basically a standard republican but with no decorum.

It took the democrats setting him up as an "easy to beat" opponent in 2016, getting beaten, flailing uselessly, torpedoing bernie for biden and beating him in 2020, assuming that he was vanquished for good, trying and failing to punish him for January 6th (thus setting him on the warpath), then enabling the Gaza genocide and completely fumbling the 2024 election, to put this specific version of Trump in power at the worst possible time. It's kind of like a feedback loop or a cascading failure. It's perfect in a way.

[–] Canconda@lemmy.ca 1 points 5 minutes ago* (last edited 4 minutes ago)

his second term wouldn't have been like this

I think its hard to say either way. Definitely something I've been thinking about as well.

Like on the one hand, it's pretty obvious project 2025 was the product of them having 4 years to screw in a single light bulb between themselves. I don't think they would have accomplished everything in the bill even with the extra term.

On the other hand, what kind of power could they have consolidated with the extra 4 years of continuity? If things had gone "according to plan" I could see Trump magnanimously passing the presidential torch to a sycophantic successor who'd allow Trump to retain his Cult leader status.

It took the democrats setting him up as an "easy to beat" opponent in 2016, getting beaten, flailing uselessly, torpedoing bernie

I know you're referencing 2020, but IMO the DNC snubbing Bernie in 2016 incentivized a lot of "nihilistic" or "accelerationist" votes. To a degree they had a point. Hillary undeniably would have been more successful at perpetuating American Hegemony. So many people voted for Trump because they underestimated how much the decline of US global supremacy would effect them directly.