>It wasn't wrong in 2016 either, what's your point?
Of course "it wasn't wrong" if claims are vague like "democracy as we know it", which means they can be used in a motte-and-bailey manner to initially imply that the US is going to turn into China/North Korea or whatever, but then later be walked back on to whatever the predictions don't really pan out.
>That the coup failed and Congress wasn't murdered doesn't mean they didn't try.
Was the claim back then that they'll "try" (however poorly planned/executed), or that they'll actually succeed?
The general thought was that a simpleton business monkey who made a virtue out of ordering people around and not accepting "no" for an answer would continue to operate autocratically even as the leader of a democratic bureaucracy.
There was a lot of equivocating that it was all some campaign schtick, the media was misrepresenting him, etc. "4D chess" and all that.
It turned out that the straightforward analysis was the correct one. Sometimes a spade really is a spade.
This round he's playing for double or nothing - having broken a bunch of laws is slowly catching up with him. He continues playing the victim while indignantly expressing a desire for overt revenge. We've already seen the mechanisms by which this will happen (paralysis of federal law enforcement, mobilization of paramilitary goon squads into the power vacuum, and political reality distortion field justifying everything as if President is equivalent to Dictator). So yeah by any reasoned analysis, 2024 really is Trump xor America - you decide.
(Once again, standard disclaimer - unaligned libertarian here. I'd never voted for a major party candidate before 2020. Specifically, I considered a 2016 a toss up between two differently-bad options, and still have no regrets there. But now that we've seen a concrete track record as opposed to mere vacuous campaigning, it would be utterly foolish to ignore it)
Of course "it wasn't wrong" if claims are vague like "democracy as we know it", which means they can be used in a motte-and-bailey manner to initially imply that the US is going to turn into China/North Korea or whatever, but then later be walked back on to whatever the predictions don't really pan out.
>That the coup failed and Congress wasn't murdered doesn't mean they didn't try.
Was the claim back then that they'll "try" (however poorly planned/executed), or that they'll actually succeed?