I jumped on the Trump train early too. for me it was just that I liked a candidate that was a bit out there, who said what others wouldn’t.
If I wasn’t the actual first Freeper to back Trump, I certainly was in the top 10.
I wasn’t paying too much attention at the time, and was like “why?” about it.
When he slammed McCain that first time, I was like “Well there goes that run”.
Then I asked myself “Well is he wrong?”, and I couldn’t say no. A couple of months later (Sept. 2015), there was a post on FR about the size of his rallies which was amazing for a pre-primary event, and I said to myself “There is something here”, and slowly moved from expecting Cruz to being a Trump supporter in late Nov of 15.