If you were to ask Bolton and Barr why they chose to work for such a flawed, dangerous man, they would probably tell you that they were attracted to a pure ideological reactionary—“Good Trump”—and they thought the angry narcissist “Bad Trump” could be managed.
They were blind. There is no “Good Trump”: the bad one is the entire package. And if he runs in 2024, his platform will be to finish off liberal democracy in America to get even for his loss in 2020. That would be the only possible logic behind his candidacy. He doesn’t stand for anything else—not even the dictatorship of the Reactionaries, although there would be a large element of that in his next term.