Some say Trump was a fraud.

He was not. You can tell by how much effort the system put into stopping him.

A lot of powerful and influential people spent a lot of effort and social capital and took a lot of risk to bring him down.

(At least) A dozen deep state employees took actions that could have ended their careers, landed them in jail, and permanently discredited American democracy itself.

The entirety of Conservative Inc lit their credibility on a bonfire.

The deep state ran a Mormon vote-splitter.

The media has been burning through it's credibility at an amazing pace with a continuous barrage of lies to stop Trump and has almost bankrupted it's own authority.

Multiple Republican elected officials ended their careers or alienated their base to destroy Trump.

These last 4 years have seen a spectacular converted effort and expenditure of social capital and legitimacy by far too many actors, for Trunp to have been a fraud or a show.

Those in power were frightened.

You do not expend what they expended on Trump to put on a show.

Were these efforts mostly successful, yes.

But that they had to put in such efforts shows that they thought Trump was a real threat to their power.

They never had to put in this effort for Bernie, Paul, Romney, McCain, etc.

Only Trump

Unprecedented

Only Nixon was even close