If you are an American in a small town that used to have a power plant / factory / car plant that most of the town worked in and brought prosperity and a comfortable existence to the town and it's people, and was shut down years ago due to globalisation / climate change policies, and now there are every few opportunities and a fairly miserable existence, then when someone comes along and tells you he will bring all that back and make things like they used to be, then surely you can see the attraction in that?
If you are an American in a small town in a pretty miserable existence who has never left your State, let alone the US and somebody comes along and says that rather than send £150 billion to a country you've never heard of in a far away continent you have never even considered visiting, he is going to invest that money back in the US in towns like yours to make your life prosperous again, can you really say you wouldn't be tempted to vote for that?
The fact is that America is not New York and Washington and San Francisco like we picture in the UK. Most of the country is much more like the scenarios described above. And I totally understand why people in that section of America would vote for Trump. In fact, it's blindingly obvious why they would. It's the same phenomenon with Brexit- people in well-to-do, wealthy and prosperous Sussex can't understand why somebody with a shit life in a dump like Hartlepool would vote for Brexit, because they are doing OK. But put yourself in those people's shoes and you would very likely have a different world view.
To be clear, I voted Remain, voted Labour in this year's election, and wanted Harris to win. But people here dismissing seventy million people as fat racist idiots for voting for Trump is just embarrassing.
I think Trump's win is a terrible result for Ukraine, and a pretty poor result for the UK and Europe. But for your average American? Not convinced it's a bad thing for them, and that is what people tend to vote on- how it will affect their individual lives.
