Donald Trump is not one thing, he is many things. For his followers, Trump is a symbol more than he is a man. This is a defining feature of fascism and other types of fake populist and authoritarian movements organized around a “strong man” leader and charismatic personality. In his role as a type of symbol and empty signifier upon which many different types of meanings can be assigned, Trump is an aspiring dictator modeled on some bastardized combination of Hitler and Putin and other criminal dictators. Trump is also a master propagandist, a white supremacist, cruel and violent, a nativist and bigot, a misogynist who has been credibly accused of rape and sexual assault by dozens of women, and an obvious criminal and felon who faces hundreds of years in prison and is, apparently, profoundly mentally unwell.
In addition to the above, Trump is now claiming that he is some type of Chosen One favored by God and Jesus to be the next president of the United States. Public opinion polls and other research and evidence (including direct statements) show that believers in White Christianity do see in Trump a type of messianic or prophetic figure who is a tool to do “the work of god” (turning America into a Christofascist Theocracy and 21st-century apartheid state).
