To add to this, the ecosystem around this is what really enables their commentary to spread into threads with only the slightest relation to their hot topics(immigration, black people, islam, etc). There's a variety of IRC channels, Discord servers and other sites(4chan, gab, twitter) that are participating and orchestrating their activities on Reddit. I think that's the larger effect the above person describes.

Even though they are generally heavily downvoted, I worry that their one-liner soundbites and gotchas will reach more people with weaker critical thinking skills.

Well put. In short, it's(they are?) insidious.

(Lots of downvotes here but no comments, so I gotta ask. What do people who disagree actually think?)

Rule of charity. If you don't understand why hitler wanted to kill all the jews, or more importantly why people voted for him on that platform, you can't keep it from happening again.

No "these people are evil" is not an acceptable answer.

The people who voted for trump may be wrong, but they are still perfectly understandable humans, doing what they think is right. Or at least what they think they have to do.

I don't think OP has said "these people are evil".

It's understandable that people who post in the_donald are heavily biased and even think they are doing the right thing.

This American Life had a podcast where they interviewed these people at the DeploraBall, and one of them even said that he "Memed Donald Trump into the presidency". For some it seems this is part of their identity.

True, but that kind of dehumanization doesn't help anything, and I don't think it's a very good explanation of the problem.

What do you mean by dehumanization? How is that happening?

But Trump voters != r/the_Donald. Calling one a cess pool doesn't imply calling the other also.

I am guessing they hate the sub so much they are negatively responding to what could be a positive characterization "safe dwelling" or disputing that entirely.

I doubt it - more likely they are only too aware of what it is, but seek to legitimise it, so downvote comments such as that.

Similar to another one in this thread saying "it's just the same as /r/politics", it's important to normalise the_donald in the eyes of potential subscribers and to imply that what goes on in there is no different than in any other political subreddit. The difference, of course, could not be starker.

Not sure why you're being downvoted. Every bit of what you're saying is true.