They are largely manipulated and get fed their news through social media, fox news and other right wing media outlets, and their peers.

So you can do this experiment yourself. Set up a brand new youtube account; the algorithm has no idea what to serve you. Watch a couple of videos about stuff that would heavily appeal to your conservative viewer, then you start getting fed more videos like that. Then slowly you'll start getting fed videos about right wing conspiracies, then your whole feed is dominated by that crap.

These people were slowly taught that mainstream media is dishonest, and that only conservative outlets are sources of reliable info. Conservative media is then slow to cover any news that's particularly damning to the GOP until they've had a chance to brainstorm a message or alter the facts somehow.

It's a giant manipulation, and the irony is, is that the conservative media and the people/corporations backing it is the deep state itself.