Not surprising. The Republican sickness includes a lack of backbone, an absence of principle, & no higher aim than self-aggrandisement.

Ultimate fraud, misdirection, disinformation and charisma is needed to initiate and promote ignorant populist support. Arrogant self promotion, tempting promises and simplistic slogans are what sustains it. Trump's success is grounded in his apparent intuitive sense of all of this, together with a complete absence of conscience or scruples of using such deceit for his own ends.

He has all the characteristics of the successful dictators of history and, similarly, has the opportunity to take advantage of them at a time of massive disadvantage, disillusionment and mistrust of established institutions by the masses.

One can only hope that he goes the same way as those other dictators.

However, without the rise of either a Republican or Democrat with the competitive charisma and honest desire to further equity and principle within the USA and one who has the courage to stand up and say it with an equal or greater voice than Trump but in language equally accessible to the naive and poorly versed as to the articulate, informed and erudite, then Trump will continue to dominate.

Yes, as do all dictators, eventually he will come to a bad end but, again in like manner, the damage and hurt he will oversee will far outweigh that of his last term in office. Far from "making America great again", it will almost certainly ensure its collapse in any positive sense as a leader of democratic values aimed at promoting a free world.