Facts are irrelevant to people without critical thinking skills who read fabricated information and believe it.
I think it's both more and less dangerous than that. Yes, it's regrettable that critical thinking is apparently no longer taught in our schools. But these arguments aren't really about facts or the truth. They're more like the tales that come out of oral traditions; stories designed to point up the virtues of the Hero and the perfidy of his enemies. They're fables that give heart to the faithful.
I suspect that if you took them one by one and treated them to a simple but cogent explanation of why many of Trump's outrageous stories just aren't true, in the end they wouldn't deny it. But they would say: "I don't care; I'm voting for him anyway".
Somehow they're convinced he speaks for them. He doesn't, of course. They're the same people he's stiffed because he decided the services he'd hired them to perform weren't worth the price. The same people he's used eminent domain against so he could build a new property they couldn't afford to live in. The same people who lost their jobs when he had his ties and suits made in China or Mexico or Turkey.
Away from the mobs at rallies, probably most are decent people. They feel left behind, left out of today's society. The old jobs are mostly gone, replaced, if at all, by lower-paying ones. Or, in some cases, by well-paying positions they're not prepared to take. Their problems are real, and for at least two decades they haven't been addressed by either party.
Now their resentment and anger have been crystallized by Donald Trump. Which really is a shame. They need a better hero.
