For decades, we have delegates all this legal authority to the president with few real checks on the offices power.
Eventually a Trump/Musk would happen.
This falls apart if they're not the minority - i.e. you failed to deal with them while they were a minority. There were levers designed expressly to deal with things like this - impeachment, etc. - they weren't used because one side thought that it would play out in their favour. As they will probably learn, it plays out in nobodies favour.
But things would have to get much much worse (and they probably will) before US population in general steps down a notch from that pedestal of 'US is the greatest and most free country in the world yadayada' and admits that well, we've fucked up and how to make sure this won't happen again.
If there would still be a way to correct all this after his term/death eventually since he won't give up power easily, which I sincerely don't think will be the case anymore.
That's because you guys get the CNN 5min recap version of American politics and therefore you didn't see the discontent that's been brewing since the 00s when US was sufficiently annoyed with establishment types to elect a young(er than the typical federal political) black guy who ran on a platform of change.
The populists will continue to win elections until morale improves.
If we had two parties for the anti-abortion voters, the “come and take them” folks, et c, to vote for without throwing their votes away, things might look very different now. Trump’s this powerful because he exploited weaknesses in one of the two “tents” and captured the whole thing, it would have been far harder for him to get so far if there were another party palatable to the right.
Unfortunately, the two-party systems serves those two parties well, and also serves the rich better than a more multipolar system (it’s easier to deal with), so this is a flaw that we cannot practically fix.