Trump was a populist, he give nice simple answers to complex questions. These answers are usually lies, but the problem is, as James Comey the sacked head of the FBI said, Trump showed that lying works.
I watch a lot of historical documentaries, many of them on the second world war. I don't know if Trump ever watched any of them but the way he played to crowds during his speeches in particular his body language, his hand gestures and facial expressions are fairly similar to Mussolini.
Mussolini was a populist too, and gave nice simple answers to complex questions, the scary thing is, if it had not been for Covid 19 Trump almost certainly would have won a second term and I suspect that might have been the end of democracy in the USA.
The problem going forward is that the hard right in the USA have now seen how lying and populism works, and even if Trump does not try for the presidency again then someone using the Trump play book, but more intelligence is quite likely to become president in the next few years.