Sorry, I’m dumb and bad at dates.
You are correct, it was shortly before Johnson became PM, not shortly after he stopped.
And FWIW, Johnson can do a fairly convincing simulacrum of some of those qualities listed, at least for the length of time he’s been paid for it. Prime Minister-ing non-stop, less so.
You had to have been following his record in depth for some time to realise just what sort of wrong 'un (rather than a “local character”) he is.
Trump came into the Presidency with absolutely no experience in politics. He knew nothing about the US Constitution, other than what every American knows (e.g. the right to free speech, etc.)
And the American presidency requires diplomacy with other nations. You have to make nice with other world leaders, or at least appear to. He did that well enough with Russia and North Korea, both of whose goals are adverse in interest to the United States; he blew Canada (perhaps the United States’ oldest and closest ally) off, and couldn’t wait to get away from that conference in Quebec that he had to attend.
Trump knew, and continues to know, nothing about negotiating deals. To him, everything is a zero-sum game: “I win, you lose.” That not how negotiations work; in a good deal, each party walks away feeling they got something good out of it. That’s fine (well, not really) for real estate deals in New York, but it’s not so good for the American consumer–the cost of his tariffs on Chinese goods was borne by the American consumer, not the Chinese. Plainly put, it was obvious that Trump thought that the Chinese would be paying those. No, sir, those tariffs are being paid by Americans. And his American supporters cheered for those tariffs, while prices on all the Chinese stuff they bought was raised. How many synonyms for “stupid” are there?
He displayed a complete lack of understanding of how automobiles and their parts are built and assembled across Canada, Mexico, and the US. The best he could do with NAFTA was to basically “renegotiate” it back to the way it was, but also to rename it the “USMCA,” which most Canadians refuse to refer to by that name, preferring “NAFTA 2.0,” or “the new NAFTA.” Why? Canadians will never put the US first in any trade deal’s name. “NAFTA” works well for Canadians and Mexicans; “USMCA” just reeks too much of “USA! USA! USA! Number One!” for Canadians. “USMCA” subordinates Canadians and Mexicans to the Americans, in other words.
His supporters constantly tout the stock market. If the market is doing well, then they’re doing well. Or at least they believe. Never mind that many of his supporters own no stocks, and would not know how to understand a stock ticker, but he’s told them that it was the best when he was President, so they believe him. They must be winning, if he said so. Right? And now, when the markets are not doing as well, “It’s Biden’s fault. Trump said so.”
In short, Trump does not know politics, diplomacy, or economics; all of which are essential for the American Presidency. I’m not surprised that over half of Americans do not, and did not, support him. And the fact that he continues to try to be front-page news just displays his narcissism. “Look at me, look at me, I’m still relevant, I held a rally which thousands” of people attended. By “thousands,” he really means, “dozens.” Anyway, that just shows desperation. Trump is hated because at this point, he’s a has-been who thinks he still means something. He doesn’t.
OP, does this answer your question?
The OP’s long gone. They threw a grenade into the room to watch the explosion and that was it.
This is not unknown to most of the people who responded. Yet the thread has garnered (to date) 224 responses.
Personally, I don’t care if the OP returns to the thread. That’s bad form, but it’s not required under our rules.
I found the thread cathartic and I think others also appreciated a place – however haphazardly created – to vent their feelings, acquired over the past 9-ish years. I know I did.
If the OP genuinely cared about learning why so many feel hatred toward Trump, there is much here to educate him. If he didn’t, I don’t see where we are harmed. Maybe someone else reading will learn something.
All of this @Aspenglow
I sure wish I could get my mom to read it.
And my dad. 
My main feeling about the man is this: when an unrepentant asshole gets elected president it gives every other unrepentant asshole in the country permission to get out of the closet and let their asshole flag fly. Normalizing asshole behavior in the public square is a bad thing, and that is putting it mildly.
Since we’re talking of closing the thread, and the OP has long F-ked off, I figured I’d leave the tread a musical rendition of how I feel about anyone who could have asked the OP’s question un-ironically.
Profanity, but not crass, so I’ll put it as a two multi-step link.
What makes you think he knows about free speech? As far as I can see, he has no understanding of the concept. He believes that he has the right to tell people what he thinks, they should be required to hear him, and nobody should be permitted to disagree with him.
Trump has been the embodiment (some might say caricature) of the worst of America and American capitalism long before he ran for President. It’s not an accident that Rage Against the Machine’s video ‘Sleep Now In The Fire’ showed some Wall Street bro holding up a ‘Trump for President’ sign back in 1999.
“American Psycho” was 1991 with Trump a perverse role model for the unbalanced lead character.
As I mentioned upthread, it was the emboldening of others most of all that made me loathe Trump.
To anyone who dared hope there might be some truth to the observation in 2008 that we had moved past racism in America (a foolish thought, but a common one), Trump has undone our progress and revived the open expression of American racism for at least a few more generations. That is his crowning achievement, and every enlightened human in the world can lay the blame on him for accomplishing that end. He has made me understand that I will die in a country where racists thrive and, when everything goes right for them, they even get to run the country for a while.
For me, that was his main … possibly only … asset. He revealed (better than any Democrat ever could) what the Republican party is, at its core, all about. For decades, the Republican party protrayed themselves as “small government” and “fiscal responsibility”, when, in reality, their base was, and is, all about hatred and fear of people not like themselves. Trump has shown everyone what is really going on with the Republican party, and his continued popularity just emphasizes just how horrible the Republican party really is at its core.
Anyone who continues to support Republicans should no longer be able to lie about what their party really is.
He was more “likeable” when he was in The Apprentice—and even then he was still an asshole. Childish, narcissistic, bigoted, and utterly unqualified for any sort of public office. I was shocked when he actually won over a much more qualified Clinton, and I never overcame that shock. The “grabbing them by their pussies” should have been enough. Not sure what that says about millions of Americans who supported—and continue to support him. He is a pig.
Except Clinton was the one person who could possibly lose to Trump. (I don’t like her, but I voted for her over Trump.)
I doubt it. I wasn’t thrilled about Clinton’s nomination, but I am very skeptical of unfalsifiable assertions that if the Democrats had just nominated the “right” or even just “better” candidate, Trump couldn’t possibly have won. I think we all underestimated the level of festering resentment that having to endure eight years of the Obama presidency engendered in the racist right, and the anxiety and anomie it created even among many conservatives who would never consciously endorse racist positions. That backlash would still have been there, Hillary or no Hillary, and we’ll never be in a position to know exactly what form it would have taken if Hillary hadn’t been nominated.
Clinton had her own haters, possibly as a result of taking Bill back after his philandering ways (and I’m sure it wasn’t the first time). But at least she was qualified. Bill had charisma as well as intelligence. Trump had no qualifications other than charisma, and that was pretty much limited in appeal to bigots across America.