Just remember that the fall occurred over the course of more than a thousand years, if you count the Byzantines as Roman. Even if not, it still happened over the course of hundreds

It's not one event, it's a slow whittling of international influence, the dereliction of duty, etc https://twitter.com/yekayuriy54/status/1346913530470129677

Besides that, this is more similar to the fall of the Republic than it is the fall of the Empire. And even that arguably took a hundred years.

I'd say Trump is the equivalent of the Gracchi Brothers - a populist who shows that you can get things done through the mob

Also worth mentioning is that in the transition to the Empire, there was an intermediate period where they addressed Emperors as "Princeps," or in English "first citizen."

So for several Imperial generations, they still kept the pretensions of being a Republic.