What historical figures (recent or ancient) can compare to Trump?
Liberals will of course say Putin (which of course they know nothing about), but in my limited knowledge, Putin gained support by reighning in oligarchs and stabilizing the country. Trump is doing the opposite of this.
In my limited knowledge, he seems most like Boris Yeltsin. A complete dolt and perfect avatar for the terminal stage of a failed empire.
I think certain traits are unprecedented. He may be the most anti-social leader in history. His administration is doing things that don’t make sense on a societal level, like defunding research for extreme weather and disease prevention.
Maybe this is just the most extreme form of narcissism on history: the entire world can end as long as I get what I want.
There are a lot of biographers that have covered him. I went to a talk a few years ago by one of them, and the objectionable things were blatant. For instance, for much of the American Revolution and the few years afterward, a lot of his efforts were to find ways to defer or entirely avoid paying the soldiers of the Continental Army.
Libs will celebrate influential historic figures and defend them by saying “the times were different”. But if you have a well-formed socialist conviction, it’s easy to parse through the “quirky historical facts” as actions that happen as part of a class struggle and confirm the alignment of individuals in the class struggle.