Explain it to me (sans facts).

Can vouch they exist... My dad is similar. Though, he'd come up with an explanation that the business is doing it to make Trump look bad so it must be the evil DEI left wing CEO (he won't verify any of it, that will just become his narrative), or something along those lines.

One third of Americans, about 100 million people, are in fact this stupid.

This is (one of) the real horror(s) of fascism:

It forms a cult of personality.

As in, a literal cult, a 'Dear Leader can do no wrong', honest to god, utterly delusional cult.

Just go check all the polls of people who still specifically support Trump's tariff policy.

Combine that with the fact that 20% of the US is functionally illiterate (reading/writing skills of a 2nd grader or worse), and the average literacy level is between a 5th and 6th grader, meaning that next 30% of people are... just barely out of elementary school when it comes to literacy.

Those numbers are for US adults 18 or older btw.

As other commenters have mentioned, I too have multiple family members I have had to go no contact with in the last few years because they are in the MAGA cult, are incredibly aggressive, delusional, manipulativr, etc.

In my case specifically, my Dad fell all the way down the QAnon rabbit hole, and the last time I was with him in person, he was showing me how he manufactures ghost guns (no serial numbers) in his garage with some vintage machining tools.

In a sane world he would be on a red flag list as a potential domestic terrorist.

In the actual world he is just a retiree with a hobby.

Either you're ignorant or a troll or a bot. I encounter these types of people daily.

I too struggle to believe it is possible, but I also know from direct observation that it is not only real but widespread.

This is Poe’s Law that you’re running into, where parodies of extreme views become indistinguishable from the real thing because the real thing is so ridiculous. So even if this specific example was fabricated by some random internet person, the same thought process works for millions of Americans.