I'm less hopeful than I was before reading your article. I can remember politics in the Reagan years, when we agreed on the facts but had different ideas about the role of government. Should the government intervene to try to lower unemployment? What, if any, war are worth fighting?

Your friend sounds like he is trying to recapture the good old days of 40 years ago. The problem is that the right wing media, led for decades by Fox News, and Rush Limbaugh, but now with a greater number of outlets and proponents, cares nothing about the facts. They are willing to make up any claim, just to support their rationalizations and politics.

The result is that there can't be any real discussion, because the basic facts remain in disagreement. If your friend is happy with alternative facts that simply aren't true, then discussions about liking Trump's style or not, or whether he calmly rejects the truth rather than screaming about it, are just superficialities that don't address or change the underlying dynamic.