It’s easy to say Trump is dumb, and in a lot of ways he is.
But make no mistake, he knows his audience (poor desperate conservatives) well and is highly skilled at manipulating them.
I don’t buy much of it… I get your point but if Trump were actually “highly skilled” we would all be doomed. He has put his foot in his mouth so many times I am certain he has athlete’s foot in the throat by now.
The issue that his popularity is persistent has 2 main root causes:
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A lot of his followers are really angry (justified or not) and they feel they finally can let it out
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A lot of his followers are deeply deeply ignorant… functional illiterate people who feel identified in Trump (case in point) and who cannot understand an iota of nuance in most topics because they simply know so little about most stuff