And I continue to not deny that the federal government has continually failed. Instead, I've been saying that they're not the only ones to have failed, and that they're not always the ones with the most control. (Federalism is still a thing)

Further, impeachment only requires the House - conviction takes the Senate. And honestly, if Trump was enacting martial law, or anything similar, I don't think it would be too hard to get a few Republican senators to flip.

Really though, I brought up "what could he do without being impeached again" as a decent metric for "how much could he do before some cities and states told him to fuck off and stopped enforcing things". Incidentally, this would have almost certainly have gotten him reelected. Can you imagine the optics of "the states that followed Trump's lockdown orders were fine, while the ones that told him to fuck off have hundreds of thousands of dead"? (But this still wouldn't satisfy the hypothetical of "as good as Taiwan/SK", despite being better for the country and better for Trump personally)