Oh, I agree that Trump's politics are horrifying. Since I identified 4 groups of Trump voters, I'll try to explain why I
think they stuck with him, even though he said terrible things.
* Traditional republicans: A lot of them couldn't stand his rhetoric, but they're worried about the Supreme Court. I think a lot of these people felt horrible about voting for him, but they're playing the long game.
* White supremacists: They loved his rhetoric, so no explanation is required.
* Anti-corruption advocates: It might sound like a cop-out, but I'm blaming this one on the media. According to exit polls, 70% of people who thought both candidates were terrible ended up voting for Trump. I understand why a lot of people didn't like either of them, but this is a classic false equivalence. I think the media spent so much time talking about Hillary's emails that people started to think it was as bad as Trump's talk about nuking people, killing the families of suspected terrorists (war crime), bringing back torture (many troops won't like that), and so many other disqualifying things.
* Working class people: Despite being stalwart democratic voters (this election notwithstanding), many of these people aren't very liberal. LGBTQ rights aren't something they think about much, and I don't think they're big on feminism, environmentalism, or animal rights. They're worried about their jobs, the health of their unions, and off-shoring. Trump promised to punish companies for sending work to other countries, and to gut environmental regulations for the sake of creating new unionized gas/coal jobs.
Also, it's important to point out that voter turnout was terrible in this election. Trump got fewer votes than Mitt Romney did 4 years ago, but he won. Hillary severely underperformed Obama in almost every state. Roughly 50% of eligible voters exercised their constitutional right on Tuesday.
1 in 4 eligible voters went to the polls and voted for Trump, 1 in 4 voted for Hillary, and the other 2 didn't vote at all. That's the real story here. We failed to get people excited about voting for Hillary, so they stayed home.