When I say Trump is not special, I mean his politics fall comfortably on a spectrum between neocons and Tea Party Republican and his preening reality TV persona and alternating gleeful and sulking narcissism are fairly typical for that type of conservative.

Trump's only innovation was to unapologetically say the quiet part out loud and get away with it, bringing the GOP's racism, misogyny, and desire for white supremacist, monarchal rule to the forefront, but Republicans and the media were eager to enable him from the start.

It could have been anyone, though. You can see guys like Jim Jordan and even Ted Cruz and Lindsey Graham wish they'd done it first. Because the GOP and their rabid white supremacist base were fully primed for someone to come along and say and do what Trump did.

Once Trump won, the entire GOP folded into Trumpism overnight because there was never any practical difference between them. The early worriers like Graham merely feared it wouldn't work and there would be a political price to pay. It turns out: not really. The base ate it up.

The media spent about a year trying to spin Trump as a continuation of "respectable" Republicanism or in tension with them before they caught on that conservatives didn't care and just started repeating his lies with a shrug.