My assumption is that Trump did very well politically in not trying to defend himself publicly from the accusation, but to stir the focus on him being persecuted because he wants to fight corruption in the governemnt.

You are conflating two different things.

The “drain the swamp” rhetoric was on his first campaign. The second was promoted as the “revenge tour”. He didn’t hide he would use presidential powers for personal gain. He openly said that he would be pardoning his allies and sympathizers, regardless of the crimes they may have committed (see the Silk Road guy, who was in prison for attempted murder among other things).

Nothing? You have as a president a felon suspected of pedophily that has no shame in insulting allies and enemies, who insults journalists and heads of state publicly without consequences and has sent gestapo in the streets.

Read it again. Nothing has changed in between both Trump presidencies.

But truth is, in many cases, Trump only surfaced many of the ongoing issues in the US.

Half of the merit of trump’s victory is no doubt because of the dems and their inhability to talk to people and to relate to them

Nobody argued otherwise.

But they didn’t lose because of that. Over half of it was because people was ready to punish the administration because of the economy and their failure to act on sensitive issues, which in part wasn’t even their fault: the US government has been notorious for being on a permanent gridlock for the past couple of decades or so.

If this is not understood, get ready for many more trumps in the future

This has happened hundreds of times thorough history. Of course it will happen again. Framing it as something extraordinarily new, triggered by a master tactician who somehow redirected their opponents’ blows for his advantage, is disingenuous at best.