Well, to be fair, he didn't participate in any primary debates at all, got his clock cleaned in the only general debate that was held (she must have learned something since 2020), because he refused to participate in any others, and canceled on any interviews he feared wouldn't be favorable to him. So we were ill served on both sides in terms of current vetting.

Is it weaponizing to simply hold a defendant to the same standards that we hold the rest of citizenry? Trump's offenses were so brazen that it would have been legal malpractice not to pursue prosecution. In fact Garland was sharply criticized for being too cautious in his deliberation for fear of being perceived as partisan.

A little more perspective: three of the recent elections were largely reactions to near cataclysmic events that the incumbent had little control to manage or correct: Obama won in the midst of the financial crisis, Biden won at the onset of Covid, and now Trump won (this time) largely because of inflation/cost of living. Some of this is just the age old practice of blaming whomever is perceived as the incumbent for their problems, and voting them out is the only sense of action they feel they can take to rectify them.