Certainly we have had a president before who unlawfully started a war, arrested tens of thousands of opposition politicians, pastors, and journalists, and threatened the supreme court when they tried to intervene. He ended up responsible for about a million needless deaths, and though a quarter of the people attempted to stop him the other three quarters supported him. He was elected with less than 40% of the vote, and only won re-election due to election fraud, and most Americans today think of him as the greatest American president. That's what good marketing can do.

So - if Trump had wanted to be a dictator, he could have easily done it.

And incidentally, it looks like he easily won the election - aside from the blatant election fraud. The American people are sick of being screwed over by fraudulent leaders. We'll see what actually happens, of course.