For my brother, it let him openly be sexist, racist, homophobic, anti-trans, and hateful. I haven't spoke to him since 2017 when we got into a big fight and he said some pretty horrid things about my wife.

"Donald Trump is a poor man’s idea of a rich man, a weak man’s idea of a strong man, and a dumb man’s idea of a smart man.”

Authoritarianism in general has a certain appeal in how much it simplifies life. In a liberal society, life is more difficult and complicated, as each person bears a certain measure of responsibility for learning about and understanding a broad variety of issues, if they want to be a responsible voter.

Authoritarianism removes this complication. If you just want to live your life on a sort of auto-pilot, without having to wrestle with a constantly changing world, then you can just let some authoritarian take care of all of that for you. So long as they sound like you want your leader to sound, you can fall into their trap.

Works great for simplifying things. Everyone would probably be authoritarian if it actually produced good results. Except it just doesn't, history has pretty clearly demonstrated that it quickly runs out of steam, stagnates and then decays, where more liberal societies remain more competitive and innovative for much longer.

“If he can be rich and powerful by hating all these people, perhaps there’s a chance for me?”

We live in a vast digital spectacle, but we don't participate in the spectacle -- we consume it. Since nothing is real anymore, since our entire reality only exists through digital media, and since we have absolutely no agency, why not vote for a shit-poster for president? It's fun as hell to watch him troll all those tedious snobs in DC. Fuck those guys.

Then enough people voted for him that something incredible happened. He won. That wasn't supposed to happen! For once, something changed, and everyone who voted for him was a part of that change.

Actually accomplishing something is fucking intoxicating. It's so easy to get hooked on that heady feeling of mattering at all for once in our pathetic, powerless, alienated existences as cogs in a giant wasteful plastic machine. We spend months, then years, then decades drifting without meaning, working jobs we hate, taking our kids to shitty day cares we can barely afford, waiting 19 month to see a doctor about that new weird lump, and so on.

For these people, reality has never been so real. They're actually in it now, doing things. They've chosen a new content-creator-in-chief, and they want his content to take over the whole spectacle.

Back in the 2016 election when he had just announced his candidacy, I recall being semi-interested in him after the first GOP debate, based strictly on his performance. His policies already sounded like racist trash (building the wall), BUT the appeal I saw from him was his apparent independent nature. He was a billionaire that wasn’t beholden to anybody, he could potentially reshape how everything was done in Washington, which has become so dysfunctional. He could work with both Democrats and Republicans (he was friends with the Clintons after all), maybe he was just running Republican, but he’d veer to the center after getting elected.

Obviously none of that came to pass and he’s just a fucking grifter who tried to become a dictator, but at the time that was the potential he had. It was an election where everybody wanted somebody who would make a big change. Sanders was far and above the best candidate to “shake things up” in DC, but then Democrats went with the most establishment candidate they could find.

He's the only one who can stop the Clintons and other satanic reptilians from consuming fetus juice in pizza parlor basements.

Rural people bitter at their lack of cultural influence in mainstream culture think he's their ticket to social control

My guitar instructor first voted for Obama and then for trump. I think it came down to guns, increasing cost of living and generally just growing to hate democrats? He doesn't hate me (knows I'm pretty liberal, but also I'll bitch about democrats in a heartbeat). Spoke with his wife (much more level headed) and it seems... A tone of defeat? Cost of living is high, hard to raise a family on a set income, and for them Trump represented someone who would change things instead of the usual status quo represented by the democrats and the usual GOP. I think it is that, guns, and he is not really wanted by either party so they like him. He's not a politician.

The Trump supporter I know thinks the government is run by tall white alien Democrats that rape children and drink theri adrenal fluid to stay young and that Trump has been arresting all of said tall white alien Democrats for crimes against children.

Or at least that's what he told me when last I was still on speaking terms with him.

If you want more insight into how Trump appeals to some people, I can recommend Ian Danskin's work about the alt-right. This is a good video to start with.

As ever, the appeal behind fascists is pussy bitches blaming "others" for their miserable failures in life.

I say this as someone who hates the man: At the time of the 2016 election, he was the most energetic politician of my lifetime. You could see that he excited his audience, people got caught up. And this was the party that usually has the less charismatic politicians.

It was also that Americans were sick of politics as usual. That's also what drove Bernie Sanders' momentum.

I think one of the major thoughts goes like this, somewhere deep inside, "If he's an obvious idiot and a criminal, and he's still a wealthy person and president, that means I COULD BE PRESIDENT PROBABLY IF I WANTED TO!!! I just don't want to, I want to eat these Cheetos... but good to know I have the option."

Also, just straight racism/sexism. Having an avatar to allow you to not feel guilt/shame for the parts of your personality that you know are rotten and wrong.

People are stupid and terrible, so he gives them someone they can relate to.

I'm an European, so american politics are quite alien to me, but back in 2016 when the whole pre-election period was happening, there constantly were posts by the media and just people in general on reddit saying how Trump is bad, how he's going to ruin US, how he'll never win against Hillary, I couldn't help but root for him as he was the clear underdog.

Couldn't help but root for him due to that, I guess, though I don't think this applies to the present day, as the whole meme is over.