It may be the case. I also genuinely think some people are not paying attention and think in a vacuum. They fail to see the malice and the words and writings from these people wanting to destroy the function of the government.
The problem with the CEO as president metaphor is that the CEO of a company is functionally a dictator. If the company is private, then there are no checks on the CEO at all.
Calling someone a dictator is an accusation, something every American was taught was wrong in school. Calling someone a CEO is a compliment, something our collective media has taught us to aspire to.
CEO is just a softer word that makes submission easier, or even logical, while it hides the truth of that power structure which is functionally the same for both.
"The CEO metaphor re-frames political rule as a business operation, which makes executive overreach appear logical rather than dangerous."
A large component of the right-wing media campaign for the last, well, all of my life has also been to normalize their actions by accusing The Other Side of doing it first. "Activist judges" was the most notable one.
But hey, the president is like a CEO, right?