Trump is charismatic because he's a narcissist. Not in spite of it, but because there's a direct causal link.

This plays into a host of factors for the afflicted, including poor self esteem, familiarity with (and abuse from) other narcissists, and a whole lot more. This is very, very bad news because it suggests that a huge swath of the country is coping with some degree of mental health problems. The current system is pretty good at handling full-blown disorders, but anything less gets a pass or maybe is held at bay with minimal intervention. The bad part is that folks are predisposed to overt manipulation like we've seen in the last two presidential elections, because of it.

Upside is that enough people are self-aware and this search text auto-completed for me. But good grief are there a lot of results: https://www.google.com/search?q=why+do+i+find+narcissists+attractive

Edit: Usually I like posting things like this along with a solution, rather than just alarming people. In this case, I feel the need to post the core problem at hand, so that maybe people can see what they're actually up against, and focus their efforts in the right place. Unfortunately, I have no idea what the right answer is here, but I'm willing to talk to anyone about it. Thanks for reading.