Thank you and welcome. If you want to be able to understand even deeper and able to engage with others more effectively then it is worth learning dialectical materialism. Here’s a reading list if you are interested:

• Elementary Principles of Philosophy, Georges Politzer
• Materialism and the Dialectical Method, Maurice Conforth
• In Defense of Materialism, Georgi Plekhanov
• Dialectical Biologist, Levins and Lewontin
• https://redsails.org/what-is-dialectics/
• https://redsails.org/on-dialectics/

"The basic call to action looks something like this:

1. Stop accusing the masses of being “brainwashed.” Stop treating them as cattle, stop attempting to rouse them into action by scolding them with exposure to “unpleasant truths.”
2. Accept instead that they have been avoiding those truths for a reason. You were able to break through the propaganda barrier, and so could they if they really wanted to. Many of these people see you as the fool, and in many cases not without reason.
3. Understanding people as intelligent beings, craft a political strategy that convincingly makes the case for why they and their lot are very likely to benefit from joining your political project. Not in some utopian infinite timescale, but soon.
4. If you cannot make this case, then forget about convincing the person in question. Focus instead on finding other people to whom such a case can be made. This will lead you directly to class analysis."

https://redsails.org/masses-elites-and-rebels/

The whole thing is a good read (approx 80 min) and have a look through the sources as well.

Though Trump and his ilk may not have the most comprehensive understanding of American imperialism, he and his ilk are allowed to do the things they do because their system of capital allows for it ie there appears to be competing interests of capital here.

For example, there may be here capital interests that feel programmes and networks like USAID have outweighed their usefulness versus capital that feels the services like USAID are vital in maintaining imperialism despite their cost.

Why and how the former has gotten an upper-hand over the latter would warrant an analysis on its own but likely the heightening of contradictions of capital such as the reduction of real productive capacity within the imperial cores, the reduction in leverage of superexploitation against the global south, the general reduction in rate of profit, along with cultural issues secondary to lack of sufficient education of how American imperialism works even among the “elites” that capital felt was not necessary to maintain the system may have all contributed to this.

Remember one does not necessarily need to know how an engine works to drive a car but that lack of knowledge becomes more signifcant when the car breaks down. The engine of the car could almost be considered reified in this analogy; capitalists could be considered priests at the altar of capital.

/Edits: clarity

Not exactly what you asked for but a lot of these “post-marxist” philosophies have at least some of their roots - intentionally or not - in Proudhonisim. Proudhon wrote Philosophy on Poverty after which Marx responded with his critique, the Poverty of Philosophy, which you may find of interest.