Unequivocally worse.

Trump and his ilk want fascism, because it gives the capitalist class the most control over the people and our society. A smarter Trump would not only be instilling fascism but would be doing so in such a way that could actually win people over by being conniving and coercive to regular folk instead of just being a loud mouth bigot that strokes the egos of the lowest common denominator in American culture.

I've debated this a lot with friends and family, usually in terms of trump dying and Vance taking power.

I'm not sure which is worse and I'm scared to find out.

Regardless, I think as things get worse, we get dumber and more polarized, increasingly easy sounding solutions that are terrible in reality, on both sides, become more and more appealing. And that means things are gonna get a lot worse.