I don’t think, given the reality of their policies and their entire party platform and the people they force into office though blatant cheating or otherwise shady means, that ‘evil’ is too strong a word at all. At this point, ‘corrupt as hell’ isn’t strong enough anymore.
In 2016, my 60-at-the-time white, ‘independent’ (Republican pretending to be undecided, basically...), conservative Christian Promise Keeper, Blue Lives Matter, ‘Antifa are the real Fascists’, toxically ‘masculine’, ‘emotions are for ethnic people’ Navy veteran father refused to vote at all for president because Hillary is a woman (sorry. I mean #butheremailllllllllllllzzzz #Benghaziiiiiiiiiiiiii) and Trump was, well...Trump. As much as he hates progressive ideals like treating Muslims like human beings, or holding police accountable for shooting unarmed black men in the back, or LGBT+ rights and not being allowed to default treat young women as sex objects, he couldn’t support a man like Trump. (And let me tell you...considering that his son is a gay man and an atheist, his daughter is a rape survivor, his kids both have had multiple roommates and friends who are Muslim, whose son’s best friend/soulmate/‘lobster’ is a person of color...? Dad is batting a perfect score if his goal is ‘not having my kids at my funeral’...)
Fast forward to last month, when he uses my life-long pro-choice, pro-equality Democrat mother’s credit card to buy $150 worth of Trump paraphernalia, including a camo MAGA hat. And got mad at her for being upset at him doing that in her name. When confronted, all he could say was that he ‘doesn’t want to live in a socialist country’ because....well, he isn’t sure since his dream is to live in the world of ST:tNG when ‘humanity has gotten past all the greed, racism, sexism and all of that nonsense that’s holding us back’. When asked if he supports Trump now, he said yes, because ‘jobs’. Like the one he lost when his company decided that hiring two fresh-out-of-college kids to do his job for a quarter of what they were paying him was more financially sound for them than keeping him on for two more years when he could have retired with a pension, leaving him jobless and rapidly depleting his nest egg on pyramid schemes, religious bullshit and GOP fundraisers.
This is the Trump base. Scared old white men willing to vote against their own (and their kids’...and their grandkids’...) interests, undereducated simpletons who vote according to what the stars of Duck Dynasty tell them, and sociopathic lunatics who would rather ‘stick it to libtards’ and revel in ‘libtard’ tears than actually work to make the world better for everyone.
Because to them, sharing what they were handed on a silver platter by their parents is the same as oppression.