Also worth noting that this is not the result of some kind of transient phenomenon: the Republican Party and its allies in the business sector have been deliber

Also worth noting that this is not the result of some kind of transient phenomenon: the Republican Party and its allies in the business sector have been deliberately laying the groundwork for much of this for decades. Just as one example, the Fox News network has been providing propaganda that strays far too often into outright deception for something like 30 years now, and, as many of us can attest, there is a whole category of people who have been watching it for most of that time and believe everything it says. Because of the way it frames reality, that also means they will refuse to believe anything that disagrees with it, and deem it liberal propaganda trying to trick them. My wife recalls telling her parents to "stop watching that" during the 2000 election campaign; they did not, and now are fully down the Trump rabbit hole, with very little hope that we could get them to believe even simple things like "some of the people ICE is detaining are fully legal".