To be fair, the institutions of the US at this point look mightely weak. The Onus is not "only" on trump though, we didnt get here withought decades of manipulation by both parties in in a form of power struggle against eachother that kept testing the limits and has made somewhat common that which should not ever have corrupted the system. gerrymandering is just an example, one where both parties are just kinda tearing down the rules for their own gain when they can. Trump deffinatly is a new extreme though, in fact very notably in redefining what laws even apply to him personally, just to try put every part of the system to his control by all the means he can invent. Hell if he could find dirt on any of his opponents he'd likely blackmail them than adressing it by any legal fashion heh.
Just to say, the fact that even Trump can go so far, is indicative of the weakness of such institutions like say the supreme court, atleast in what you think they ought to do or represent.
Its not that everything about it is all so new, America had weak institutions for a number of periods trough history, the amount of utter garbage decisions made prior and after the ACW from among others the Supreme court are pretty baffling to if you read on them and what they caused. The whole thing is in many ways also analogous to how the triumvers for example destroyed the inner workings of the Roman republic, which much that it was something that kinda deerved to die also speaks for "the methodology of gaining power". Undermining institutions and redefining or reshaping them is part of it.
What is more different in these last decades is the way media power is utilized and controlled and the effect it has. The role of just a single man called Ruport Murdoch, former CEO of Fox, into creating a volatile poppulist envriroment that can be used for the likes of such ambitious men is perhaps not to underestimated. No wonder that one of Trumps most early schtiks was "fake news", as a means even to drive people into a more censored echo chamber where white can be claimed to be black and Trump is the infallible hero against unquestionable evil if not "godlike" to boot, and everyone who says otherwise is part of the plot agaisnt him. To create a army of non-questioning die hard loyal followers, who are "angry beyond believe". With even people like Musk taking a stake in that game of controling the media and setting it to obvious use of propaganda under a rather cynical banner of "free speech". Trump in fact has been so empowered by media that he's well beyond the control of the GOP, it has surprised even them, its almost like fox news is actually one of the largest parties in the US.
We might need to rethink media, and what it requires to foster a society where political debate is done by people who are more politically concious and responsable, and who for that purpose recognise that we require media that is about factual news, not about false spinning narratives that can go so far as to cause turmoil in society purely on the instigation of some geriatric Australian who holds bondlike-villan sort of schemes. A daunting challenge, one we seem to be loosing for lack of being able to correctly measure the threat.
