It was Mark Levin who first pointed this out back when he supported Ted Cruz in the primaries (as I and many others). Levin accurately described DJT as an "agrarian populist", not a conservative. 

Trump leaned more and more conservative as his term progressed but failed to learn the political ropes well enough to prevail. That and the fact that the 'Crats coopted the mass media as never before, and also turned the government itself into a devastatingly effective political weapon for the first time in a long while.