Hmm, as someone who's been active (on and off) in alt-right/dissident-right/WN circles since 2013, I remember a lot of cautious optimism and skepticism about Trump in 2015/most of 2016. It was during the few months before he was elected and when he was President-Elect that people got intoxicated by him and swept up in the excitement.

I felt his rhetoric was too good to be true, personally. He was a mainstream celebrity, billionaire, reality TV persona and an NYC Baby Boomer with Jewish connections to boot.

Trump was always something like a human Rorschach Test. People saw what they wanted to see in him. The left, Ben Shapiro tier neocons, and the dissident right saw a crypto-white nationalist/fascist, sure, but don't forget the legions of normie boomer conservatives who saw him as Ronald Reagan 2.0 (not Hitler 2.0) who was going to bring economic prosperity, stand up to the ChiComs and do wonderful things for the black community, helping to get them off that "Democrat plantation."

The immigration dogwhistles? As far as they're concerned, that's not really about race... it's about illegal immigration.