“And it won’t make one bit of difference
If I answer right or wrong
When you’re rich, they think you really know”
Exactly! this was the surprising thing. Everyone knew it was possible to convince a good portion GOP base to elect a fascist, it was just assumed to bring the rest of the GOP electoral coalition along would require someone who did do that. Just a regular fella, with downhome southern charm, who doesn’t have much book learning and fancy big city manners, but just cares ever so much about God and country.
Trump was absolutely not that in any way shape or form and never tried to be. I think it was Dubya who showed that was possible. Dubya did try to be that but was completely unconvincing yet he succeeded in convince the GOP base to vote for him anyway.
I dunno. I still think pointing to a single person as “the” anything is silly. I’d say Obama was even more responsible - his election seemed to bring the barely hidden bigotry in the party into sharp focus and got the dog whistles really going. But even that is just another reflection of decades (or really centuries) of the barely disguised racism we’ve always had in the US.
If people prefer pointing to one point or another on the greased slope from whatever arbitrary historical starting point down to what we have with Trump, they’re free to do so, but none of them make any more or less sense than the rest