and for reasons that escape me there's a cult of personality around him.
he for sure masters the art of playing the media, getting and redirecting attention. probably why his public outbursts are so outlandish, contradicting and even nonsensical. i guess that tactic can only work for so long and at some point people will just stop registering. then again that invites reflection about why societies are so vulnerable to that kind of messaging, imo the way msm media has degenerated has a lot to do with it, infantilizing discussion and promoting polarization. this has been going on for a while.
The thing about cults of personality is that they tended to either have a dearth of personality or completely repulsive personalities. They get the cult by picking on the naive, vulnerable or just plain stupid.
David Koresh (Branch Davidians, A.K.A. Waco) was reported to be an utterly repulsive person. Didn't bathe, had terrible BO, unkempt, no interpersonal skills (I mean almost none, the average /.er would be positively suave in comparison) except he could pick the vulnerable people out of a room and get close to them.
It's the same with people like Trump, Farage, et al. they figured out that they can rile up the stupid people and then use that anger to get what they want. The people they get riled up over non-issues are too dumb to realise that they're the ones being manipulated, so much so they'll defend the manipulation, violently so in many cases rather than take simple and easy steps to stop being taken advantage of.
You are right of course, that the media played a huge role in this.