Alarmists like to accuse Donald Trump of being a new Hitler or Mussolini, when in fact he's a lot closer to being a new Berlusconi. The comparison fits so well that nothing more needs to be said, except for one critical element - Italy in 1994 looks nothing like the United States of 2017.
The political realities of the nation are much larger than the man holding its highest office. The United States is an empire in the late stages of decay, which looks more like 19th Century France than 21st Century Italy.
I am speaking of Napoleon III.
Granted the men are very different, but their circumstances are strikingly similar.

For example, consider this Wikipedia excerpt about Napoleon's presidential bid:

His campaign appealed to both the left and right. His election manifesto proclaimed his support for "religion, the family, property, the eternal basis of all social order." But it also announced his intent "to give work to those unoccupied; to look out for the old age of the workers; to introduce in industrial laws those improvements which don't ruin the rich, but which bring about the well-being of each and the prosperity of all."

It's much more eloquent than Trump, but the concepts are the same.

The excellent book I'll be using is Karl Marx's 18th Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte.

Now consider Napoleon's/Trump's base of support.

Historical tradition gave rise to the French peasants’ belief in the miracle that a man named Napoleon would bring all glory back to them...The Bonaparte dynasty represents not the revolutionary, but the conservative peasant; not the peasant who strikes out beyond the condition of his social existence, the small holding, but rather one who wants to consolidate his holding; not the countryfolk who in alliance with the towns want to overthrow the old order through their own energies, but on the contrary those who, in solid seclusion within this old order, want to see themselves and their small holdings saved and favored by the ghost of the Empire. It represents not the enlightenment but the superstition of the peasant; not his judgment but his prejudice; not his future but his past; not his modern Cevennes [A peasant uprising in the Cevennes mountains in 1702-1705] but his modern Vendée....In their view, the National Assembly had hindered his progress. He has now merely broken the fetters that the towns had imposed on the will of the countryside.

That couldn't better describe Trump's rural, working-class base.

Another striking similarity is the weakness of the democratic opposition.

Finally, instead of gaining an accession of strength from it, the democratic party had infected the proletariat with its own weakness and, as usual with the great deeds of democrats, the leaders had the satisfaction of being able to charge their “people” with desertion, and the people the satisfaction of being able to charge its leaders with humbugging it.
...No party exaggerates its means more than the democratic, none deludes itself more light-mindedly over the situation.

Marx could have written this yesterday, instead of 160 years ago.
Not only that, but consider the interaction between democrats and the people.

We have seen how during March and April the democratic leaders had done everything to embroil the people of Paris in a sham fight, how after May 8 they did everything to restrain them from a real fight.

Russia, Russia, Russia.

Finally, consider what rhetoric conservatives use against progressive forces of all kinds.

Whatever amount of passion and declamation might be employed by the party of Order against the minority from the tribune of the National Assembly, its speech remained as monosyllabic as that of the Christians, whose words were to be: Yea, yea; nay, nay! As monosyllabic on the platform as in the press. Flat as a riddle whose answer is known in advance. Whether it was a question of the right of petition or the tax on wine, freedom of the press or free trade, the clubs or the municipal charter, protection of personal liberty or regulation of the state budget, the watchword constantly recurs, the theme remains always the same, the verdict is ever ready and invariably reads: "Socialism!" Even bourgeois liberalism is declared socialistic, bourgeois enlightenment socialistic, bourgeois financial reform socialistic. It was socialistic to build a railway where a canal already existed, and it was socialistic to defend oneself with a cane when one was attacked with a rapier.

Some things never change.