Your optimism is misplaced. They may not be smart, but they have a low cunning. They have learned from this episode, and they will make sure there is always a Trump figure in place (not necessarily at the presidential level, but that might work best) to distract the more credulous 80% of the public. Obama at least pretended that there could be public oversight of the unsupervised services. They haven't suffered that insult since Trump took office.