The GOP tried to go for the shake-up and bring in a game show host business man with a big mouth and a bigger ego to appeal to the populists that wanted to see a shake-up.
They then got lucky because the dems put up the single most unelectable bitch to ever get anywhere near a federal office to run against him.
What they didn’t expect was Trump not being a good boy yes man listening to the advisors like they thought he would, and instead set about using the next 4 years to irreparably damage the GOP in the eyes of the generations that will succeed their primary voter-base.
Im almost tempted to point to that Oprah interview from decades ago where Trump said if he was going to run for president he’d run Republican because Republicans are idiots and believe anything he said and use that to say that yeah, Trump is a master 5d chess player...except his game was to destroy the Republican Party and use himself as the sacrificial lamb to make it happen.