In the 1980s, Trump always made Spy magazine's "Top 10 Worst People, Places or Things" list. His one "mitigating factor" was always "at least he's not in politics".

A useful idiot still needs to be able to do things for you, win over the right people, set the tone of the room, be the distraction. If the useful idiot goes off of the rails, stops being taken seriously at all, you're left with just an idiot. They're worried they lost the useful part

It’s RawStory. Effectively Newsmax for the left wing. Feel-good stories that hold essentially nothing binding them to reality. Best avoided.

I'm surprised more people didn't see him as a joke after commenting about his building being the tallest after 9/11

Agreed. I assumed there was something very wrong with him during his first term.

He was never all right. Even when he was a kid people said that he had massive ego problems. When he was in high school playing poorly in sports people found the fact that he never admitted to losing or playing poorly to be intensely irritating.