Perhaps Trump will act as a sort of fascism vaccine in the long term.
Made from the same fascist fabric as the worst of the, causing society to develop the necessary anti-bodies and fight back, but weak enough to not do too much damage.
Or maybe one of those childhood diseases you fight off and develop immunity against, but leaves with with permanent scaring.
I hope so. The GOP wakes up, as if from a bad dream, and then runs Nikki Haley to prove that they can be the party of immigrants, women, and fiscally conservative socially-moderate people again.
The thing about the GOP is that even the promisingly normal among them get warped and mangled by the incentives of the primary process.
Bobby Jindal, Rudy Giuliani and Chris Christie all looked like somewhat reasonable choices at one point, until they had to go through the primaries and came out the other end as twisted, raving loonies. Nikki Haley looks fine now but there's no reason to think she'd fare any better.
That's been the one reason for a sliver of optimism so far. He obviously wants to be a strongman, but he's so incompetent that maybe he can't pull it off.
Both of them take legal actions agains anybody who critize them. Even if it is against to right of speach. Even if both of them are wrong and the critisizer is right.
Accuse journalist that they lie and take legal actions. Even if the journalists are right.