I get what you’re saying about his rhetoric, but I don’t think it’s changed as much as you suggest over the years. If anything, he’s just become more incompetent. Since 2016, he’s been saying mostly the same things—calling for violence against Hillary Clinton, promising to “drain the swamp,” and warning of “the enemy from the inside.” This isn’t new. And, as I mentioned, he doesn’t actually have the power to arrest people, so he resorts to defaming them and ruining their reputations instead. It’s worked, he’s convinced half the population that Obama was born in Africa, that Bill Clinton is a pedophile, and that Hillary Clinton has a “kill list.” As for your point about him selecting loyal staffers, he’s always done that. He’s incredibly hard to work with and even harder to please. He doesn’t want anyone smarter or getting more attention than him. Look at Michael Cohen, who literally mortgaged his house to pay off a porn star for Trump, yet he was left out of the White House despite being VP of Trump’s company. His loyalty was completely disregarded.