His message was definitely, in many ways, way more and more effectively populist than Hillary's. His wall's a great example: it's far-right from some perspectiv

His message was definitely, in many ways, way more and more effectively populist than Hillary's. His wall's a great example: it's far-right from some perspectives, but from others it's what they've been speculating aloud (amongst themselves, with no public stage) as a "common-sense" solution for decades (source: been around plenty of that, for... decades). It's the definition of populism. Ditto trade issues. There's a lot of perception among voters that the average citizen got screwed by things like MFN (or whatever they renamed it to) status for China and a variety of other trade agreements and, go figure, a lot of that sentiment crosses party lines. His hard talk about those agreements and China was, again, blue-collar as hell and exactly what you could have heard anywhere in middle America (or just outside a big city) for many years before the election, but had practically no voice in either viable political party. His message was, to borrow one of his favorite words, kinda perfect. Nb I'm not using populism as a negative term here, and do not consider something automatically bad because it's populist. Now, to defend describing his supporters as having been "fooled", I'd say the strongest evidence for that would be that some of his major proposals weren't ever really proposals, and still haven't meaningful become proposals (his "most perfect" or whatever health care reform comes immediately to mind—what exactly was that supposed to be? Very good, the best, whatever it was.) and that his support many of these positions is very probably opportunistic and disingenuous. To tack back the other way, I personally would accept someone I knew or suspected to be opportunistically, rather than genuinely, supporting my interests if I believed they were likely to meaningfully advance them regardless, so my support of such a person wouldn't necessarily be evidence that I'd been "fooled". Probably some were (I mean, there've been no shortage of interviews with Trump voters all over the media in the last 3 years, and clearly some were not, uh, going in with both eyes open) but who knows how many knew he was full of shit (I mean it's kinda his thing? What he was famous for everywhere, including right-wing radio, before he became a Republican politician?) but thought he'd effectively advance their interests anyway. Possibly a lot.