He tried to kill Maduro and the plot was foiled lol, and yes you’re right, Chapo talked about it at length in an early-ish episode, how all the lib media praised him for bombing the Middle East like a “good president who respects the office” or some weasely bullshit like that

I would argue that opportunists taking helm is a direct outcome of the systemic pressures created by the early stages of the collapse. The dynamic is that people's material conditions start to decline which in turn leads people to become disillusioned with the political establishment. This opens up opportunities for people on the political fringes to come in and pose as fresh alternatives not tainted by the establishment.

This is precisely the dynamic we saw play out during 2008 crisis that gave rise to the occupy movement on the left and maga on the right. A lot of people lost faith in the system, and started looking for solutions outside mainstream politics. Trump seized upon the moment promising to drain the swamp, and so on.

I agree that there is a lot of institutional inertia, and this is a big factor in ensuring the collapse continues progressing unabated. Halting and reversing current trends requires honestly acknowledging root causes of the problems in order to take corrective action. However, existing political climate precludes this from happening as was illustrated during 2020 election. Sanders proposed some sound and necessary policies such as The Green New Deal, public healthcare, and student debt forgiveness. Yet, even these necessary corrective measures were rejected by the establishment.

Since the effects of the collapse are not evenly distributed, the plight of the working class is largely invisible to the policy makers. This creates a lag between problems occurring and the leadership becoming aware of them. Thus things have to degrade quite significantly before people in power become convinced of the severity of the problems.

The further along collapse of the empire progresses the more difficult it becomes to arrest it. At the same time loss of trust in public institutions and the rise of opportunists ensures that tough measures that are necessary become increasingly impossible to take politically.

I think first and foremost- Trump was and is a narcissist, a showman, and a businessman (however good a businessman he might or might not be). It's all circuses, wheeling and dealing to him- play hardball (or even a fair bit deranged) with China and Iran, make a big show of talks with DPRK ("peace with the unimaginable"), he may be of the same hegemonic mentality than his peers, and he might be the farthest thing mentally from a peacenik- but when it comes down to things I think he was someone who could be dealt with, someone for whom the constraints of reality and the circumstances all around him in his country (those who were white, anyways) actually holds some weight. (the same I would not say of mainstream western politics nowadays)

Trump’s a pretty dumb guy, he hears about a powerful man in charge of an entire country that has nukes and Libs hate him, so he was like “Ahhh, he must be a guy like me, I hear he has the biggest army, everyone’s telling me , Mr. Trump please don’t talk to him he’s so scary, and I said lemme talk to this guy. And I said he’s probably a great guy. Not many people know that, he’s actually very smart like me”

I always interpreted it as Trump seeing it as him getting to say he made peace in the Korean peninsula or something.

He tried to make them give up the nukes, as would Al Capone say, "with a kind word and a gun", instead of the usual for US just gun.