Care to expand on this? It reads like the problem is that those idiots in flyover country (and rednecks everywhere) just hate libs and the only reason Trump is popular is because he doesn't like them either.

I'm not the OP, but that is at least partially true. They don't like liberals, and so they vote not-liberal (which in 2016 and 2020 was Trump). I don't want to generalize, so I won't. At least part of his appeal was that he "normalized" racism, as evidence by his being supported by the Daily Stormer and whatever the KKK publishes. He actually accomplished very little, though LM was very honest about her position (which was something like "he gave us the SCOTUS, so I don't care about anything else"). He did tap into a lot of anger and hate in ways that other Republicans didn't (and still don't). Some of it aimed at liberals, but also -and I'm not quite sure why- at democracy itself. Which is the only reason I can see Republicans excusing his attempts to nullify the election results and install himself into power. They are angry/resentful/hateful of the democratic process.

I can only guess, and my best guess would be that they don't like how society is evolving (for whatever reason...gay rights, black POTUSes, abortion rights, or something else), and they'd rather burn it down and install a strongman than continue to live in a democracy where their values are a minority position. Just a WAG that could be completely off-base, but it's the best I an come up with at the moment. I live in AZ, and I know some Trump supporters. I think they are often misinformed, but are otherwise decent folks. So I'm not saying they are all bad, but I still don't get them accepting a wannabe-dictator instead of a democracy that sometimes doesn't go their way.