I think it is even worse than that. He isn’t simply a puppet, he is an ideologue that perfectly embodies the repressed rage of a class of people who believe that life is a zero sum game. What we are dealing with is a death cult. They legitimately believe they are chosen by god to dominate the earth, and every single time they have gained power they have commit or attempted to commit genocide in the name of purifying society and bending it to their will. This is the ultimate existential threat as far as I am concerned, and why I am a staunch anti-theist. No Christian can ever be truly trusted because if and when they take power they will all fall in line because the alternative is sacrificing themselves for a cause they do not believe in.

I prefer to think of him as a tumor: the tumor wouldn’t exist without the underlying cancer (and removing it while leaving the cancer otherwise untreated doesn’t save you) but it’ll still kill you.

I’m not a doctor so I’m not sure whether the parenthesis is true of literal cancer, but it definitely is in the case of political and cultural cancer like this.