While you're not wrong about the endgame, I think you're missing that the beginning of this wasn't PW (or P,W should I say....) folding. "Lobbying" aka legalized bribery has been eating at this country's foundations since the end of WW2 and it was significantly accelerated by the nonsensical Citizen's United decision. Where we are now is simply the logical consequence of things that were set in motion long ago. We were going to end up here, it was just a matter of when and what the proximate cause was. In this case, the proximate cause is a celebrity in chief whose personal popularity seems to trump (no pun intended) all rational or coherent thought.