Trump has access to the world's best intel-gathering agencies and he's making billion dollar decisions based on what he sees on Fox.
That is his audience. He doesn't care about anything else except his own ego.
Religion is definitely part of the problem, as it is easy to polarise the religious behind very singular topics, like abortion. And when it comes to Mormons, we used to have Mormons come and stay with us in Australia. The first set that arrived on the first night, wouldn't sit at the table to eat dinner because of the colour of my father. My grandad (mother's side) went to their room and said that they sit at the table or they get out.
their policies are incredibly unpopular.
This is true, but it often comes down to ownership. I wrote about "conservatives" the other day having something to conserve. A lot of those on the left have far less ownership than those own the right - less to conserve, less to protect. But, they still want to have benefits, right? Of course the policies made to protect wealth are going to be unpopular, because most people aren't wealthy. The problem is that neither side has solutions, they are just as bad as each other, just in different ways.
When I think of 'conservatives' I think of people like Mitt Romney and Malcom Turnbull, people who want to grow the economy by reducing government spending and imposing fewer limits on business.
I think a better name for Reagan and Trump supporters would be 'regressives', people who want to regress back to a time where white, male landowners had all the wealth and power.
I personally know of US conservatives who voted for both Biden and Harris because they were more closely aligned to their values than Trump.
The way I view progressives is as investors. They want to invest in people and infrastructure to grow the economy and look after all people.
I do strongly disagree with you that neither side has solutions... I think both sides often propose very workable solutions on a whole range of issues, the problem to me is that in two party systems, there are incentives to block any proposed progress to score political points and deny your opponents any success (which in a normal world should see you voted out by your constituents).
I get your disagreement with the "no solution" comment and your explanation is why neither offer real solution - they cannot practically do anything of any real value, no matter the ideas they have. That isn't a solution, it is well - nothing. Two party, or 10 party systems don't work. There should be a singular group with changing members, with the core goal of improvement of wellbeing, whatever that requires.
Essentially a group of benevolent dictators? It would definitely be dramatically more efficient... but you lose the checks and balances that 'should' prevent, say, the singular group waging a genocide on a portion of the population.
The CCP is a pretty good example of exactly what you're describing... they've achieved incredible infrastructure that are impossible for most other countries... but they also disappear journalists, critics, enslave minority groups and bulldoze anyone that gets in the way.
Governance is just so hard to both get right and stay right. People are kind of the worst.