Keep in mind, that Trump won because minorities turned against Biden and his policies. This is highlighted by the fact, that Harris got the same percent of the white vote as Biden did. So, why would that be?
The lowest 50% of wage earners saw a 12% increase in wages over Biden's term and a 20% increase in the cost of living. That does not include any impact of "borrowing costs, which for those making major financed purchases increased dramatically. In simply terms, it is extremely rationale to vote against politicians whose policies are driving down your standard of living. Those same people saw a substantial rise in their standard of living under Trump's first term.
Honest and unbiased highly trained academics have noted, the best predictor of future behavior is past behavior. So, Trump in spite of his obnoxious personality can be expected to implement policies that taken as a whole will improve the lives of those 50% of America's workers earning below the median income level. So, it is clearly rationale that they chose Trump over Harris.
The insane thing would have been to vote for Harris and expect that something would change, especially after her comment on "The View" where she said she could not think of anything she would have done differently.
Hopefully, you understand that human behavior as Maslow's hierarchy of needs, it is logical and rationale to expect people who are slipping on the hierarchy to focus on which candidate is most likely to improve their standard of living. For the highly educated high income individuals living functioning under the higher levels of Maslow's hierarchy of need, it is logical to expect them to be more ideological voters than economic ones.
Democrats for decades understood this. Then Obama and Hillary Clinton came along and between the two transformed the party from one that saw Dick Cheney as "evil" to one that granted his daughter the second highest honor this country can bestow on a citizen. Said more simply, the Democrats have become the new globalist party with a large dose of new Marxist identity politics incorporated into its ideology.
Your quote by Martin Niemoller more accurately describes the Democratic party rather than the Republican one. I was a Democrat, when the Democratic party stood for individual freedom in the 60s and early 70s. Then it began to change and move away from MLK's vision of creating one America where everyone had the same civil rights to Malcolm X's view, that America was comprised of competing identity groups each fighting for their "fair share" of power and wealth.
This approach has always ended up turning on itself. And this turned out to be the case, when Obama's globalist policies left the once strongly Democratic blue-collar white worker feeling abandoned. Blacks and Hispanic wage workers stuck with the Democrats until Hillary came along. Suddenly, her disparaging comments about them revealed her to be an elitist.
Trump is an opportunist. He saw how the Democratic party had systematically alienated workers working Americans in favor of a global vision. This vision essentially traded off American jobs for global prosperity. Sounds good, unless your job is the one being traded.
So, it is not irrational that people voted for Trump, it is entirely rational. Working Americans need a politician that will reinstitute "protectionist" policies. One can argue that such policies are not for the greater good of the world or even the economy as a whole but arguing protectionist policies don't help workers is like trying to convince schoolteachers they don't need to be party of union. Whether one is talking about unions, tariffs, or immigration, the rationale strategy for workers is to advocate for less barriers by workers "outside" competing with those "inside" to drive down wages.
As a side benefit, if you look at Trump's policies to the extent, he is successful at dismantling the administrative state first implemented by FDR, he will be shifting more power to the states, where their local citizens have a greater voice than in national politics. The more local decision making occurs in this country, the more "democracy" prevails.
