Since I sympathised with the people who sympathised with him, I did not regard him as an inherently "evil" -- which seemed to be the left's take. And it's a pretty dangerous one. Because when people identify with trump, if you call him evil, so to them. And the left's habit of just opposing whatever he says renders their side seemingly at least as callous as him: which is why so many polls believe trump understands their problems better than the other side.
I think it's more accurate to say trump is a complex individual who could, with the right social environment, express quite different politics. What I hadn't anticipated is that his social environment has become so radicalised, professionalised, and totalitarian. (As someone else put it: the last trump was "Jared's" and this one is Don Jr's. Trump, I think, can be both. That's over now.)
In any case, I think it's a moot point. I was wrong. This latent rage of the right against their cultural marginalisation is now a smokescreen for the totalising of the presidency. It's a real problem.
What are some of the problems he identified? Because his speeches just seem to tap into vague insecurities and the general claim things were better in the past
Devil's advocate, I think it's easy if you don't directly feel impact from his policies. I've been losing my marbles about Trump at family dinners for a while, but for a chunk of my family he's a check against "radical" liberalism (read: gender ideology, spending money on things that don't serve everyday americans) and a path to lower tax bills.
Similarly, I think it's easy (from a conservative perspective) to dismiss all the seemingly emotional reactions to something Your Guy is saying because that's just politics; that's the expected behavior of politicians. It's not a problem if Your Guy is caught in a lie because they all do it.
I'm straw-manning a bit, but I'm just trying to sketch anecdotes of how I've seen otherwise rational, empathetic, intelligent people routinely offer (to me) unreasonably calm takes on Trump's activities and behavior.