The pandemic, if anything, has proved the "authoritarian" diagnosis to be false. Authoritarians love to have an excuse to lock everyone up in their homes and decide from on high which businesses will be allowed to operate. Trump OTOH was like "math is tough; let the states handle it!"
I think that's oversimplifying. The fact that Trump is not a full-blown authoritarian, or is bad at it, is compatible with his expression of a number of authoritarian values.
This is true, but it emphasizes the difference between marketing and reality. Trump's evocation of authoritarian imagery has been uncorrelated with genuine threats of increased authoritarianism in USA. These threats do exist, but focusing attention on Trump has been a distraction from genuinely opposing them.
