This is the bit that infuriates me when talking with folks who aren’t as engaged politically, Trump is a symptom, he’s a vessel for all the hatred and vitriol. When he is gone the ideology will persist within the GOP and conservative thought for decades
I think it is even worse than that. He isn't simply a puppet, he is an ideologue that perfectly embodies the repressed rage of a class of people who believe that life is a zero sum game. What we are dealing with is a death cult. They legitimately believe they are chosen by god to dominate the earth, and every single time they have gained power they have commit or attempted to commit genocide in the name of purifying society and bending it to their will. This is the ultimate existential threat as far as I am concerned, and why I am a staunch anti-theist. No Christian can ever be truly trusted because if and when they take power they will all fall in line because the alternative is sacrificing themselves for a cause they do not believe in.
It's possibly even worse than that but he is definitely a puppet.
He used to be a NYC Democrat. He even helped Bill get elected.
I think it's a combination of money he owes to SA, Russia, etc and his clearly failing mental health. He isn't actually an ideologue as he believes in nothing except his own godlyness. The only master he has served was himself up until a decade or two ago. Remember that he did run for office a couple of times in the early 90s iirc and lost but those were on third party I believe, not republican.
Anyone who has been paying attention for the past 40+ years knows what's what. He is a grade a moron who doesn't even know how to run a business. Try watching the apprentice, that will tell you all you need to know about his business acumen. I'm not going to go into his history of failed businesses, money received from multiple enemies of the state, etc.
I prefer to think of him as a tumor: the tumor wouldn't exist without the underlying cancer (and removing it while leaving the cancer otherwise untreated doesn't save you) but it'll still kill you.
I'm not a doctor so I'm not sure whether the parenthesis is true of literal cancer, but it definitely is in the case of political and cultural cancer like this.
He isn't a tumor per se, he is a growth that was fed and groomed by putin and others. He got lucky and the msm thought he had zero chance so they used him for ratings and they ended up giving him an actual shot last time around.
Remember that Hillary won the popular vote. He only won because the right has gerrymandered some states to the point that he got the electoral college in enough states to outweigh the popular vote.
Everyone reading this, remember this for the future. In the past few decades that I have been old enough to pay attention, no republican has won the popular vote, they only win because of the aforementioned gerrymandering and the electoral college. If we got rid of electoral college no republican would have the Whitehouse for a very long time.
My main hope is that the inevitable power vacuum and power struggle fractures the GOP, if not beyond repair, long enough for it to seriously hurt any sort of party cohesion in the medium-term.