In some very important ways Trump was actually not as bad as many of us worried, e.g. he was unsuccessful in pulling off a coup or winning the devotion of the military as a whole. So far US government institutions have proven to be resistant to pure authoritarianism.
Me too,
Many (myself included) thought that his complete fucking incompetence was likely to prevent him being as damaging as he could have been. Which is why many were (and are) concerned not so much about him as those who have seen what can be done, and who have the competence to do it.
As to the coup and the military, two things - the coup got waaaaay further down the road than one would hope it should have. The mob came within yards and minutes of capturing legislators. It would have been far more encouraging if they had been perfunctorily shoved on their ass by a vastly superior government force, rather than kept out by a remarkably few plucky people. And as to the military (and police) both the makeup of those who attempted the coup, and the vaccine thing, shows there are a large proportion of the rank and file people who are very much idiots and of the RWA mindset and highly vulnerable to someone like Trump. If he’d just been able to keep his contempt for them slightly more hidden, who knows?
I knew how bad Trump, the man, really was and still is. But I did not think his administration would be so ridiculous. My initial impulse was that “the generals and advisors and various other people with longtime government service would keep him on a leash”, but this quickly proved untrue as he immediately started a revolving door of Secretaries of State and Defense. But even then I thought, “well, he’s just playing golf and eating fast food all day; he’s not starting any wars; he makes the country look like a joke to the rest of the world, but the catastrophe that everyone predicted hasn’t happened so far.”
Then COVID happened and I quickly learned that he had NO business being president, he had no clue what he was doing, and we can’t ever be in a situation again where the president is so utterly unqualified. Maybe I should rephrase that - I never thought he had any business being president in the first place, but COVID made it hit home just how important the concept of leadership was, and how lacking in this quality he truly was.
Hence his slogan, “Malice, tempered by incompetence.”
I’m gonna say yeah, the Trump administration was about what I expected. Grossly corrupt, pandering to racism, staffed by stupid and incompetent grifters, and working zealously to shred the Constitution in order to stay in power forever. I can’t think of anything he ever did or said as President that really surprised me in the sense of “I didn’t realize he was capable of being THAT shitty”.
I was pleasantly surprised that he didn’t start any wars or even really seriously threaten to.
I was unpleasantly surprised by how quickly and completely the entire GOP kowtowed to him.
He did his goddamnedest to drag Iran into conflict but they were too smart to bite.
I can’t believe I’m writing this, but:
I don’t think this is the case. If he had wanted to go to war with Iran, the drone shoot-down in 2019 could have provided enough of a casus belli. Certainly Bolton and Pompeo would have been happy to do so, but Trump - for whatever reason - did not.
Of course, the fact that he had Bolton and Pompeo advising him is indicative of bad judgment right there.
Pretty sure the assassination of Soleimani (sp) was another effort by Trump & co to start a war with Iran.
I’m inclined to agree - Trump likely did not like the idea of a war with Iran. He liked talking like a tough guy - he liked that part of the conflict with Iran. He liked doing anything he could to rattle Iran’s cage, but I don’t think he really wanted a piece of Iran. Pompeo and Bolton, OTOH, were probably trying to goad him into a conflict and pissed that they couldn’t pull it off.
Yeah, one of the very few positive things I think about Trump is that he doesn’t really seem ever to have been a committed war hawk.
Indifferent to the human costs of war or the justice of a casus belli? Sure. Eager to use the imagery of military success for self-glorification? Definitely. Hubristically convinced that he could run a war better than anybody else, and military commanders just ought to shut up and do what he suggests? Yup.
But anxious to have a war in order to show the strength of American military muscle and violently force foreign peoples into submission, as opposed to the much cheaper and safer alternative of merely declaring that you’ve shown the strength of American military muscle and achieved the submission of foreign peoples? Actually, no.
One positive thing Trump did was rip the bandaid off this AFG situation, and Biden was smart enough to take the situation as-is and get us out of there. True Presidential bipartisanship. 
That much does seem to be the case. But Individual-ONE wanted adulation and election, so his goal in trying to start a war with Iran was to use it as a prop for his campaign. Really, how can you cast out the despot who is leading the fight against those greasy, olive-colored evil ones out to kill us all?
Iran saw what he was doing, shot some missiles at a military base and essentially told him to fuck the fuck off. Which is good in and of itself, but it is difficult to imagine, had he got a war going, how would it have played against a rising backdrop of SARS-CoV-2?
I’ve said it before and will say it again.
Trump did not expect to win in 2016. He was mad that his stupid ‘The apprentice’ show was canceled.
He was going to try to start the anti-Hillary network. AHN. It would put FOX on the sidelines with the lies and grifting. He would out fox FOX with his lies and the money would poor in.
His entire live and ‘business’ model is.
- Con
- Cheat
- Try to lie your way out
- Blame others.
That’s it. That’s the entire package.
Did we know how bad Trump would be?
Hell, did we know how bad the Republican party would be?
A big part of the problem is that Trump, and so many of his followers, believe their own bullshit.
He really did believe that if he “talked tough”, Iranians would just collapse in a quivering puddle of fear, and beg him to let them off the hook. He never imagined that the Iranians might actually call his bluff, and exert their own agency over events.
Time and again, the worst problems of the Trump Era can be directly attributed to Trump himself believing his own bullshit.
He’s always believed (like most of us) that he’s the hero of his own story. One of his many, many failings is he’s always believed he’s the hero of everybody else’s story as well.
I’ve known since childhood he was a ridiculous figure. Back in late 2015 some friends and I were talking about the Republican nomination and knew Trump would win it. Nobody else was polling close so the idea there’d be a sudden resurgence by anybody else was nonsensical. And we all knew it was going to be a total shitshow. What we didn’t understand was that the rest of the GOP was just going to roll over. We thought they’d reign him in.
I thought as some people’s favorite candidate dropped out, Republicans would start to consolidate behind a normal person. I realized pretty quickly, however, that a candidates were dropping out, Trump was gaining an increasing portion of each dropout’s supporters. It became evident pretty early that he was likely to be the nominee. I still thought he’d lose the general election but I also knew it would be a nail-biter. An election in which he didn’t lose by a landslide taught me a lot about America but nothing good.