The movement Trump reflects and appealed to, if one can call it that, was one of periodic resentment of and reaction to periods of immigration and/or social progress in US history. Nothing new there, see the so-called Southen Strategy in response to civil rights. I posted elsewhere on DP an editorial from the NYTimes in 1890 about Sicilians that was remarkably similar to Trump's escalator comments about Mexicans. Trump would have been talking about Jews and Italians 100 years ago, about the Irish some years before then, and about southen Germans before then.
And Lincoln signaled virtue, as did the suffragettes, Martin Luther King, Cesar Chavez, and the second wave of feminists. Imperfectly and perhaps obnoxiously at times, but history has moved forward in response to their signals. Yes, we have not practiced what we preach when it comes to principles of the Declaration of Independence or the Bill of Rights. But Trump has not practiced and long ago, before his presidency, even abandoned preaching our principles, with his appeals to bigotry, and advocacy of torture and war crimes.
And please, Trump was an improvement on Clinton corruption? You don't need a diploma from Trump University to realize how his administration has soared past anything that the Clinton's did. Apply for a grant from the Trump Foundation to study these things if you need more information.