[I]n a system of government built on dispersed power that can function only through compromise—in which a policy progresses through the bureaucracy b… - Mark Danner

The thousands of crusaders were pouring from Pennsylvania and Constitution Avenues and coursing freely, like blood from an open wound, onto the unobstructed Capitol grounds. Screaming protesters, some shooting pepper spray or bear spray or thrusting their flags like spears, had been facing off against the outnumbered and under-armed Capitol Police since before Trump had finished speaking. Already the flimsy line of metal barriers had been breached, the crowd had pushed past the base of the steps, the single line of police, broken and bedraggled, struggled to keep them out of the building.

[At a campaign event held at Freeland, Michigan on September 10, 2020. President Donald Trump:] "We brought you a lot of car plants, Michigan! We brought you a lot of car plants. You know that, right?"
Comes in prompt response the ear-splitting roar of affirmation, clear as clear can be: Yes, Mr. President, we know that! A joyful knowledge, a knowledge to celebrate: all those jobs in all those car plants! But what exactly is it possible to know about those car plants? I could not have been the only one in that obstreperous crowd, made up overwhelmingly of Michiganders, to know the presumably important fact that, well ... those car plants didn’t exist. [Ellipses and italics in the original source] Any member in good standing of the ancient "reality-based community" could have told you that since the coming of Trump no new car plants had been built in Michigan, that since his ascension not less than three thousand Michiganders had lost jobs in the vital auto sector.

[Observing the Trump rally at The Ellipse preceding the Capitol attack on January 6, 2021] The imagery of Trumpism is about strength and cruelty and dominance even as the rhetoric is about loss and grievance and victimization: about what was taken and what must be seized back by strength.