I agree that America’s political problems are greater than Trump. He is certainly was symptom and not the root cause.
However,
as president, he fuels the toxicity and champions all the things that are wrong with politics, from his twitter diplomacy, to his juvenile name calling, to his personal character failings, to his ignorance and dumbing down of complex issues, from his lying, to his nepotism, to his chaotic administration. And he’s created a cult following who is willing to ignore all that, to embrace and to perpetuate that toxicity. He has made the most toxic aspects of politics into something that his followers defend and admire. He may have started out a symptom. But he has remarkably quickly become the disease.
Yeah, as I said, I get why there's a lot of people upset with Trump. I think this is going to end up being a primary issue in the upcoming midterm elections.
As for the "cult following," there are a number of factors in play.
For one, there has always been certain segment of the population which is mistrustful of the mainstream media, often dismissed as being "too liberal." I don't agree with this myself, but I know that the perception is out there and why people believe it.
Similarly, many people are mistrustful of government, particularly the power, size, and scope of the Federal government as it currently operates. This view has actually been at the very backbone of US political culture from its very beginnings.
Added to this is a feeling uneasiness and the belief that we are a nation in decline. You can hear it practically everywhere you go - statements like "the country is going down the tubes" or "to hell in a handbasket." I've been hearing this kind of talk all my life, and not just from Republicans or right-wingers. The left also has made similar observations.
It's not just empty "gloom and doom" rhetoric either; we do have some serious problems facing this country on several fronts. People see this; they're not blind. They see the boarded up buildings in areas which once abounded with activity and commerce. They see all the abandoned industries and other remnants of an economy that once worked. They can see the condition of their roads and other public works. They see their tax money being collected but nothing to show for it. The people think they're being scammed, and in a lot of cases, they probably are.
Not just that, but there are warnings of climate change and other environmental problems on the horizon. There are worries about geopolitics, terrorism, and a heating up of international tensions.
There's been a growing feeling that the country has been moving in the wrong direction and that it's been horribly mismanaged for a long time. There's been a longstanding perception of corruption, cronyism, "iron triangles," incompetence, waste, and abuses of power - and these are mostly considered reasonable perceptions compared to some of the wilder conspiracy theories - which can find many believers among people who already mistrust the government.
So, the people who comprise the "cult following" you mentioned see Trump as their white knight in shining armor who is going to "drain the swamp." They see him as going in to clean up government, so the perception would hold that the government (or "deep state") is going to come back at him and fight back with a vengeance. They might argue that there is a vendetta against Trump from a government that doesn't want to be cleaned up.
You might dismiss it as a bunch of hooey, and it probably is, but what I see is an ever-growing vicious circle in which the more they attack Trump, the more dug in and entrenched his followers become. If it seems like there's some kind vendetta against Trump, they might try to make him out to be some kind of martyr.
