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Other posters have already come up with Huey Long, Charles Coughlin, Joe McCarthy, Lyndon LaRouche...
No American Presidential candidate before Trump has been so widely popular whilst also having a cult following of people who basically believe in an entirely different reality whilst also being so brash and brazen about it.
There have been demagogues before, with cultish followings, but they've not been anywhere near as popular as Trump.
To attempt to add a few:
Technically, Joseph Smith, founder of Mormonism, attempted to run for President back when Mormons were basically what we would now call a domestic terrorist group, and when most non Mormons viewed them as a dangerous cult.
He was assassinated by a mob, who stormed the jail he was in whilst awaiting trial for treason and other charges, before the election took place.
Also, you might be able to consider the fairly brief existence of the Anti-Masonic party at least somewhat akin to the living in a totally different reality attribute of MAGA people.
Basically, following the inciting incident of the Morgan Affair, where a William Morgan was apparently planning to publish a book outlining the evils of a Freemason conspiracy to control government and business in the US, but he was jailed, a bit of a circus trial ensued, and then he disappeared.
The Anti Masonic party was the US's first third-party and basically it was built off of what we'd now call conspiracy theories stemming from the Morgan Affair, and called for Masons to renounce their fraternity or to be uprooted from positions of prominence.
Much like the modern MAGA movement, it was full of highly religious conspiracy theorists, but it didn't really coalesce into also being a cult of personality around any of their more prominent members the way such reverence exists for Trump.
This is pretty much where I was coming from with the post. It seems like a new thing to have something so culty be so popular in the US.
Thanks for these. Joseph Smith in particular is an interesting example. I didn't know he attempted to run for President at one time. On the Mormon side, I find it quite interesting that his religion still exists despite him being outed as a charlatan. I guess that also says something about human nature.
The resilience of obviously garbage beliefs among people who are manifestly not stupid is a mystery worth solving.
It's not a great mystery, these are people raised in a Fox News propaganda bubble. Their reality is based on lies.
Yes, I'm sure that Fox News explains the endurance Joseph Smith's religion.
The problem is much bigger than Fox News, the MAGA Republicans, or the United States.
LOL oh man I have not thought about that fool in years... I would spit on the ground when I would walk by those fools. There was a lot of them in Seattle. One time a guy took offense on me looking him in the eye and then spitting at his feet. Since I lived in the neighborhood I went home and grabbed a couple eggs and tossed them at their booth. Good times!
I was born and raised in the PNW and first saw the LaRouchies at the UW, with a large display of Obama with a Hitler mustache... though I did not spit at them lol.
I was living downtown in Seattle and they were always near the market bothering people. They would setup their little booths right on the sidewalk and force people to walk around them. When they would try to talk to me is when I would just spit at their feet. I probably fit the street punk look and they would talk shit at me so I escalated it that one time. The Obama Hitler shit just enraged me
Interesting enough, Morgan’s widow became one of Joseph Smith’s plural wives. It’s a small country.