No one ever said it was a perfectly populist direct democracy…

MAGA/Conservative/people like you seem to be trying to muddy the waters by saying “well tEcHnIcAlLy we we’ve always been a republic, not a democracy”, when both you and the audience knows it’s in bad faith and intentionally missing the broader point of what is being done now by the regime to dismantle our system of government in favor of autocratic dictatorship.