Please understand that Trump is not the exception nor is he unique to American history; he is a byproduct of it. He is the unfettered, morally bankrupt rotten core of American white supremacism/ imperialism staring back at us. It's always been there, its just more unmasked now.
Deep down I think the liberal corporate media/ establishment doesn't actually have a problem with Trump's policies per say (look at Pelosi, Schumer and other Dems comments on ravaging Iran), but rather that he's exposed the facade of America. That's what they find so difficult to stomach and contend with. He doesn't care to mask the true face of America's horrific violence or disregard for human life.
American imperialist hegemony built itself upon a veneer of moral supremacy that legitimized it's violence as necessary and good. America was a brand, a business, with a very specific image that needed to be sustained.
Marketed through its media, corporations and propaganda expeditiously— it depended upon upholding an illusion (myth) of moral and civilizational superiority, that covered over its true evils. That always gave it the upper hand because it was inherently benevolent.
This justified it's global dominance, even though it was always maintained through such unforgiving brutality. Yet Trump routinely exposes this with both his incompetence and variable honesty, even though he's not actually trying to be honest.
Hence they purposefully make Trump seem like an outlier to the presidency. Recall the years long obsession with the Russian collusion narrative, because of the optics.
His victory over the neoliberal feel-good, female empowerment candidate (Clinton), made America, the self-anointed bastion of democracy and progressivism in the world, look bad. That it couldn't actually elect a borderline fascist or overt racist when racism had just ended with the first Black President previously. That it must have been that some foreign entity that helped him win.
People today laud war criminals like Bush and Obama because they perceive the US presidency through the expectation of a performance. Trump lacks the relative decorum of his predecessors to mask the fallout of policies which are just as destructive as theirs, if not more.
Trump is only an exception to American history in that he doesn't outwardly behave *presidentially* because he wasn't coming off of the traditional, cookie-cutter DC establishment politician conveyor belt.
He doesn't possess the charm, wit or likeablity of his predecessors to paint over America's horrors. He has laid it all bare; gloves off, mask off.
He's given them permission to show their true essence and not be ashamed of it. There is no need to hide it any longer— the violent white supremacy— unleashed to maximum capability. Maximum lethality, not tepid legality; as Hegseth put it.
He's told them to take pride in it; to do it boldy. No fanciful language or need to spin the reality of what they're actually doing or believe in; unrelenting and unabashed; not restricted by or accountable to, any entity or semblance of morality. Just raw power.
He is America's true face.
The claim — long advanced by communists — that the United States is the Fourth Reich was never metaphorical. The US is the nucleus of world fascism.