Ian and Candace are not dumb.
They’re actually quite smart. Devious, but smart.
Their audience is dumb.
And being smart, Ian and Candace know that their audience is dumb.
And they are smart enough to understand they can exploit their dumb audiences, pretty much indefinitely.
And they are damn good at it.
There's a way to make parallel "truths", even when it's grounded in complete lies, and those who get sucked into that echo chamber have a really hard time getting out.
Candace, Ian, MTG, Tucker, etc etc etc are running exactly what the Democrats run, what the Ukrainians run, what the Iranians run.
Basically, no matter the reality, they can say "Ukraine is winning", "Biden is at the top of his game", etc. In the face of truth, they will just bold face lie and those followers can't even tell.