To top it all off, the media essentially created a candidate that would rile people up, then disowned him which only made people want to vote for him more. TrumpLand covers this very well.
On the other side of the aisle, we had a very weak candidate running against what was a media troll, with vast amounts of funding that didn't end up translating into a great ground game. I remember when Bernie was running he would have his supporters call every phone number in certain states, and get people out hitting the streets and asking for your vote. I saw very little of that from Hillary.
I mean the decline of the US manufacturing sector has led to an emerging middle class in many other countries. Clearly most of the wealth is concentrated in the hands of the few but there has definitely been a reversion to the mean globally where the average worker on earth is doing better and the average worker in the US is doing the same or worse...
The media certainly propped up Trump quite a bit starting from the primaries (preferring to show empty Trump podiums instead of other candidates, for example), it's the wholesale merge of news and entertainment that's the reason why, because he's both at the same time.
When the media spins something up into a narrative, they're just grabbing those narrative devices out of a hat full of tricks that have worked in the past to engage viewers.
I've got 15 years working in media. There's no conspiracy, it's just run of the mill shameless opportunism. 'Look at that, they're eating this shit up, feed them more!'