I don’t really have an answer to this minidiscussion, but to me it was eye-opening to learn about the Tea Party (early 2000s) specifically, how it was sponsored by Very Rich People™, even astroturfed, how its stated goal was the infiltration of the Republican party, and how of course all their ideology and demented ranting were very much the same as what we see today.

And once my eyes were opened I started seeing it everywhere, going back in time: Alex Jones, Rush Limbaugh, the very questionable influencing by so-called christian churches, Big Oil deliberately making kids stupider, etc etc etc

And of course that’s only the USA; I must admit I’m not so fluent in other countries, but surely we must see that assholes like Netanyahu or Orban predate Trump. There’s also the Phillippines which basically experienced a Trump in 2015 iirc.

tl;dr: Trump is “only” the culmination of something that we have since dubbed “Trumpism”.