Protecting children is a duty. But people who pretend to be obsessed about it are in general far-right crack-pots. Because these people usually attribute in a hateful way rape and pedophilia to certain groups of people only. This has always worked this way.
Pedophiles and rapists must be arrested but the obsession is usually a giveaway.
tbh Trump could have actually become a dictator if he leaned into the whole QAnon thing.
Like what if one day he just said that God came to him in a dream and ordered him to rid the world of pedophiles. And he subsequently signed an executive order that let ICE extrajudicially execute convicted child molesters.
It would be an extreme violation of the constitution and US law. But people hate pedophiles so much, Trump could actually get the public behind it despite it being illegal. Especially if he invoked some sort of religious justification behind it. You could claim “God’s law supersedes the constitution”
Then all he would need to do is slowly create more and more of witch-hunt until inevitably he has his political opponents labeled as pedophiles or pedophile defenders and imprisoned/executed.
At least this is how I would go about things if I wished to be a dictator. Use an actual problem to undermine human rights and due process and once the guardrails are gone, use the opportunity to consolidate power.
Trump could never do it though because he and his friends are in the Epstein files.