There was a line from an old detective TV show where the private eye has discovered something in the past of the femme fatale and she says:
"Just what rock did you crawl out from?"
And he answers
"I didn't crawl out, ma'am, you found that rock and turned it over all by yourself!"

That's one description of what happened with Trmp. He was out there all the time, it took the public watching him on television, and it took the public voting for him, which they did, enough to elect him once and enough to come way too close to electing him again. Trmp can't help being Trmp, but the problem is that America made Trmp possible and electable.

But life has changed, for sure, Some of it's Trmp, some of it's Covid, and some of it is the interplay. And most of it is fallout of technology.