Competent but supremely corrupt. Roy Cohn is the best example, although I wouldn’t be surprised if Fred was paying those bills.
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But that assumes “dismantling a democracy” was actually his long-term goal rather than a natural consequence if his myopic drive for personal power and self-aggrandizement.
I don’t think he gives much thought to democracy or the workings of government one way or another except in terms of what those things mean for him personally at any given moment in time.
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Trump ain’t smarter than the rest of us - he’s more privileged. That’s a perennial substitute for smarts, ability and hard work, and a reliable way of staying out of trouble even when doing really dumb, illegal things. Trump is a great example of how powerful (multiple categories of) privilege can be, and how difficult it can be to pierce through it, because whole sections of society are there reinforcing that particular type of privilege.
Though I think, even with this, Trump blundered into it more than anything. He was the thing (“rich” celebrity who does and says what he wants) that people were happy to project onto. He has no real sense of what his base wants, so he tries everything to see what sticks, then does more of that. It’s a very dumb process, but the success of it is mostly about what Trump is (rather than what he does or says), which is why he can’t be easily imitated by the likes of DeSantis.
Worse, he steps over the line constantly, but his privileges prevent him from (so far) seeing any consequences.
Yeah, it’s probably more a question of when it stopped (i.e. some time before he became president, and lawyers had gotten wise to what a terrible client he was, and that he didn’t pay his bills). He certainly had lawyers who got him out of decades of legal trouble. Though granted, much of that was made easier because no one made much of an effort to hold him accountable in the first place…
Yeah, though that was the goal of some of the right-wing ideologues on his staff. (Which they were able to pursue precisely because it aligned with Trump’s myopic drive for personal power and self-aggrandizement.)
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Moore has made many predictions regarding Trump at various times. Some have come to pass, others have not. We really shouldn’t attribute Moore with any special abilities to make accurate predictions in this area.
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No one deserves to live in a fascist dictatorship. NO ONE. Not even the people voting for Trump. We all deserve better.
There is no reason to think that it’s not the plan now, especially since he’s aligned with people who have that as their actual goal.
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It also assumes that “dismantling a democracy” is some sort of special art, like defusing a bomb or disassembling a car engine, as opposed to bulldozing a house. Creating is hard but destroying is something any idiot can do if you let them. It may have taken an Augustus to create the Roman Empire, but all it took was a Sulla putting the sword ahead of the law to permanently cripple the Republic.
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A few months back, Legal Eagle did a review of his lawyers. IIRC, there were a couple who ranked “actually quite good”.
The rule of thumb is: the less you hear about them, the better they are. Alina Habba you heard about the most, and the results speak for themselves. The lawyers that LE ranked at the other end of the scale got a “who??” or “nope, never heard of them” from me and others.
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Effective. Not smart.
Al Capone was effective. He did business on his terms. Period. Trump does business on his terms too. Namely, agree to anything but never pay.
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Everyone here has done a good job discussing the problems with describing Trump as “smart” so I have nothing new to add to that. I do agree with this, though, 100%.
We cannot count on the courts or the media to save us. We cannot hope that “reasonable” Republican voters will save us. Those may still happen, but we cannot afford to expect it or rely on it. We have to turn out in numbers at least as large as in 2020, and we have to vote for Biden. Protest Biden all you want over Israel-Gaza. He deserves it. But still vote for him. This is an inflection point in our nation’s history. And we have the power to make that go in the direction of the good.
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I think you’ve nailed it. Trump is a once in a lifetime (hopefully) combination of utter shamelessness, a phony manufactured reality show image which connects with the worst people, a sense of personal entitlement which has never been effectively challenged (until now), a timeshare condo salesman’s glibness and amorality, and a criminal willingness to exploit the very worst in people and their bigotry.
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Who the unhappy fuck is “we?!?”
Speak only for yourself, comrade; all I’ve ever done is try to do right - I sure as fuck don’t “deserve” to live under a christofascist regime, and neither does anyone else.
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I think people really went wrong when they began to hallucinate the symptoms of unchecked venal narcissism as a sign of intelligence.
What is smart? Is smart getting what you want at all costs and getting away with what you want at all costs? Is that what “smart” people do? Is that what everyone would do if they weren’t just too stupid to get away with it?
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That’s one of the things I remarked on at length over the years; How much money do you have to be skimming to drive a casino into bankruptcy??
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Minor correction. He did not drive a casino into bankruptcy.
Six.
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There has been a long-standing misconceptualization about fascism in general, that the people who pull it off are some sort of brilliant masterminds and tacticians… all the dudebro “historians” who love to focus on the Wehrmacht and their “cool gear” and ignore all the, you know, mass murder and “boring” shit like that haven’t helped.
The reality is that fascism works on grade school bully logic and always has. It doesn’t take great smarts to beat the shit out of the people you’ve deemed “the enemy” and use the fear you spread to take power. Fucking grade school children can figure this shit out. 
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Yup; they even have made their plan public- Project 2025. (no links, because fuck them sideways with a [REDACTED] coated in [ULTRA REDACTED].)
… and then declare bankruptcy when the people owed money sue (or counter sue them until they can’t afford to keep fighting it) to get out from under it.
PLUS INFINITY.
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This absolutely reminds me of the claim that if someone isn’t a religious believer, especially a Christian believer, then what is holding them back from raping and killing?
The answer is the same: decent people don’t do that because they have ethics/morals/whatever you want to call it. It’s not dependent on religion, or money.
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Maybe I’ve missed someone upthread saying this about his so-called intelligence/cunning/street smarts, but what I’ve observed is that he never backs down. Part of his success – maybe all of it – is that he’s never, ever wrong. He never admits weakness, or regret, or a lapse of judgment, or a mistake. He never apologizes, is never humble, never laughs at himself. Yes, he changes his opinions constantly, but he never admits his original stance was in error, he just moves on. And when people try to corner him on it, he dissembles and changes the subject and will not be drawn into self-analysis or self-defense. He switches to attack mode, and it’s why no journalist has ever gotten the better of him. I’ve never witnessed such an ability – such commitment to the bit – in anyone else. It’s this sociopathic, narcissistic superpower that has enabled him to get away with constantly failing upward all his life. It’s infuriating to watch, and I have no clue how to combat it – other than recognizing it and voting against it.
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On top of straight White male supremacy.
(It’s weird how that most significant factor keeps getting overlooked.)
No one of color in this country could have ever gotten away with all the ceaseless chicanery which that orange fucker has over the last 50 years; that was only made possible by the existing hegemony and unchecked greed.
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