Have you ever heard translations of Russian, especially Soviet, propaganda? The lies are absurd. They conflict with reality to the point many viewers have firsthand experiences that conflict with them. But they work, because people are trained to believe them - the unbelievable aspect of them makes them far more effective in a weird quirk of psychology

That's the real reason why you can't attack Trump from the right - he'll lie to your face and call you a hater, and his base will believe him. Doesn't matter if you have facts, doesn't matter if you're just repeating his words from last week - if you support Trump at this point, either it's convenient for you to support him or you believe him in a faith sort of way. Either way, nothing said on that stage is going to change their minds

The other aspect is that Trump is insanely charismatic. He's great at debate - without an impartial judge that can shut him down, he gets to play by different rules than everyone else on the stage

The best example of this is to read one of his speeches. You might listen to him and go "wtf is he talking about", but reading his speeches is viscerally shocking. He rambles like my grandpa did when he was having a bad day with dementia - he drifts topic to topic, rarely goes back to finish a point, and like 90% of it is just filler words.

But despite all that, people absolutely love to hear him speak. There's plenty to say about the man, but his charisma is off the charts.

Engaging him in debate is a fools errand. He will win, because he can sit up there, not make a single coherent point, come up with gradeschool nicknames, and half the country will walk away with the impression that he won the argument