From an all out attempt at a coup held up with ease. That’s really been true for the entire 4 or 5 year period during which Trump has been clawing at the fabric of our democracy - even his own admin blew the whistle on his obvious attempt to extort campaign aid from Ukraine, and it put tough policies in place against Russia even while Trump sucked lazily on Putin’s pee-pee. The guardrails existed even within his own admin.

DHS, a part of the exec branch, along with the states, counties, cities and towns of the US just pulled off the “safest and most secure election in American history” in spite of a global pandemic and Trump’s best efforts to defraud America. There was plenty of competence in the effort - reputable, seasoned attorneys engaged in the effort post election and quickly saw the futility, which is why all we see now is the Rudy-Sydney clown show.

Lesson being - it’s not an easy thing to pull off. If you look at the sum total of the Trump years from 2015 to right now, this coup attempt has been underway for about half a decade. Spearheaded by as talented a demagogue as the US has ever seen. People like that are always hopeless narcissists, so the incompetence borne of lack of critical thinking almost always shows up pretty quickly.

So, I do think we should take lessons from Trump’s all out attempt to subvert the Constitution and end democracy in America. We should formally codify things like states’ electors remaining faithful to the vote. But we shouldn’t overstate the risk of some hyper-competent Trump waiting in the wings. Trump’s appeal is all emotional. Like with all demagogues. Rational, reasonable, competent people make terrible demagogues, and thus rarely create cult followings like the epically gullible subjects of Trumpistan.