As Trump is a symptom of what the Republican Party has chosen to become, so too is he a symptom (perhaps the most obvious) of Americans' decision to worship status and celebrity-dom. I agree that things would've been, would be, much different and better had Twitter and Facebook reigned him in in 2012 with birtherism, in 2015, or at any time during this terrible presidency. But the same can also be said of his softsoap treatment from mainstream media as well, including all the help he got from NBC and its cable arm. That, too, could've been done without.
But there were a couple decades worth of reasons for why he got so much help over the past half decade in the political arena. His whole brand was built on media-driven narrative of his status as a playboy, a sports promoter, and a businessman. Those who worship now grew up seeing him and his affair-of-the-moment on the cover of the magazines they saw every time they passed trough a supermarket checkout line. His base was fluffed for this over the span of years. The reality tv show cemented the image; the American people have never been widely lauded for their ability to discern between actual life and cartoon imagery.
A lot of people would still be alive today if the above hadn't all happened. Because of so much media assistance, from mainstream to social and everything in between, there wouldn't have been a president Trump. The US would be in a better place with Covid like so many other countries. Naziism would not have been so normalized.
All of these things, yes. And this: people shouldn't fall for the above dumbass things. And because they did, because they chose to place so much of their lives, livelihoods, their families and communities, into this celebrity trah person, they are now experiencing public defeat at a rate never before seen. Not even the Detroit Lions or Cleveland Browns ever lost more than 50 times in about a month.