[derefr]

What about believing that he's a particularly-easily-manipulated patse (esp. when it comes to things he doesn't care about), and so this is someone else playing 4D chess through him?

For all the accusations of fascism, nobody seems to remember that a key feature of fascism is a corporate-cabal shadow government that legitimizes its activities/policies by puppeteering the "real" government to both execute and justify them.

[whatshisface]

That's what German industrialists were hoping to achieve through Hitler, but they didn't end up with anything like it.

[timeon]

Apart from what happened after war, some of them did as they got lot of slave labor during holocaust.

[Terr_]

Such as Elon Musk repeating the path and mistakes of Alfred Hugenberg.

[loudmax]

That was more or less the case during Trump's first administration. I think a lot of normie Republicans were hoping for a repeat of that. The ones that aren't in denial are being gravely disappointed.