Him being in power twice is a symptom.

... Yeah, I'm going to go ahead and blame the catastrophic decline on Trump. Sure, Fox News, Reagan, Citizens United, and a hundred other distracted disasters preceded Trump, but that Nazi shitbag has driven the U.S. straight off a cliff. The damage from his hand selected supreme court alone is terrifying.

We're not blaming the country's entire decline on Trump, just the recent acceleration of the decline. A country can't be brought as low as this in less than a decade unless it was already pretty low to begin with, but when a new factor causes an existing problem to accelerate, then that variable can certainly be blamed for the acceleration, along with the other variables that also play into the problem as a whole.

Trump is to blame for our country's decline, and so are republicans as a whole, and so are billionaires, and so are a bunch of other groups of people and many other variables.

He put oil on fire.

Nobody said the blame is on Trump alone. Xi doesn't imply it. Trump is even spinning it like the us would be way worse if it weren't for him. The people who believe it is Trumps fault aren't there, they're here lurking in the comment section. So, if you don't want to defend Trump maybe don't waste your time doing it? It's not like you could fix everything that is wrong or untrue om the internet. I've been trying and so far i haven't really gotten anything meaningful in return lol, maybe some friendly advise at most.

stop making me

nobody is making you, it's a choice

he's not like he can be blamed

lights your house on fire, it burns to the ground "it's not like I'm to blame for this" --your logic

I mean... there was a broader decline already sure. But no one has done more to accelerate it than this man. So I think it is fair to blame it on him.

That obese child rapist wouldn't defend you in anything, at all, ever. You're not rich enough for a disgusting blob of gonorrhoea like that to even think about, and even then you'd have to pay for that orange thing to defend you.

So are you really sure you want to be known as a tRUMP defender?

It absolutely can be blamed on him, and saying it can't is either ignorant or making excuses for him and his ilk.

He normalized so much shitty behavior, manipulated the Republican party into being even more shameless than they had been previously, and finally completely untethered politics from reality. Just look at how behavior changed around the time he entered politics and they realized that you can do anything with a cult of personality and a base of thoughtless dipshits who parrot every dumbass thought you have as gospel.

That's not to say he's entirely responsible, but he is the nexus point of dozens of shitty subcultures that were amplified and directed by him, leading to where we are today. If we'd gotten someone like Rubio or Jeb! in 2016 (assuming Hillary still fucked up her campaign and ignored half the country), the world would look MUCH different.