he would've have actually had to consolidate power in any kind of meaningful way instead of simply bumbling through the logical continuation of bush/obama policies while being undermined by the intel community/ his own generals and the the gop itself every time he tried to do anything that broke from neocon consensus. his own justices even repudiated him.
ironically, an actual fascist would've used the pandemic as his own reichstag fire, seized power & curtailed liberties to effectively contain the virus instead of simply mismanaging a dysfunctional, under supplied & under funded federal health apparatus that effectively let the states just do whatever. italy had tanks in the streets, south korea and taiwan created invasive ethically dubious surveillance programs to control movement. the actual white supremacists are mad that trump didn't do exactly that.
aside from the bizarre alternative-universe psychodrama that corporate media has been airing for the past years, trump in reality was basically just unremarkable and incompetent.
I agree Trump is much more of a "proof of concept" of how an actual fascist could operate. Instead, as you say, he is blisteringly incompetent and lazy. Remember he accidentally became president when all he wanted was to build a hotel in Moscow.
His tweets clearly show the mindset of someone who wants to use levers of power which are massively beyond his constitutional powers (shut down the media, overthrow elections, imprison critics). But he had neither the energy or the political skill to accomplish any of that. What he did have was the ability to convince millions of people that the US government should be turned over to a TV reality clown.
aside from the bizarre alternative-universe psychodrama that corporate media has been airing for the past years, trump in reality was basically just unremarkable and incompetent.