"[Donmald Trump] didn’t just hijack the party – and I use the hijack term very deliberately because he’s obviously not a party regular, he had been a Democrat and he wasn’t viewed as being a Republican or part of the party – he hijacked or appealed to a whole segment of the population who were obviously open to those messages," says Barbara Perry, professor and director of presidential studies at the University of Virginia’s Miller Center. "And that part of the population is still open to those messages."