Candidates like Trump make me wish that one could give negative votes in an election. That would quite effectively reduce the amount of nutcases in politics and most extremist movements would simply die. It's an attractive scenario.
This is crucial. The internet and social media have brought traditional media (i.e news channels, newspapers and news websites) to its knees. If you're smart enough to attract attention in the social media, you're going to get that much and more attention in regular media. That's because they need to go with what's viral in order to attract readers/viewers and earn their money. It's a vicious circle. That means that being provocative and charismatic gets you exposure, especially since you don't have to wait for the media to talk about you. Just tweet something silly and watch the waves of exposure intensify as they go through media outlets. The exact same thing happened in Israel's last two elections. The first time, social media was still a bit of a novelty mostly used by the "upper" bits of society. It united the secular middle class and we elected a very liberal and socialistic government. A couple of years later, after social media had been overtaken by the mainstream, we got the opposite results with a very right-winged, pro-religion government. The "masses" tend to be the less educated parts of society. Social media makes it easy to control the masses. All you have to do is say things they want to hear, be blunt and cause a stir so that everybody else also pays attention. Bam.
It also helps if you contradict yourself with everything you say. Then you appeal to every moron who's too stupid to do research but you said something they wanted to hear.
I'd love to have an honest conversation with someone that feels this way. Someone this actually plans to vote for Trump. I just can't see a single reason anyone would think he would be anything but the worst president the US has ever had. Ever.