It's so sad
I feel like in 30 years (if we're all still alive by then) we're gonna talk about like FoxNews and Facebook like cigarettes or amphetamines. This is an observable phenomenon. Certain age and wealth groups have taken to the whole internet reactionary ideology like catnip. I don't know how else to describe it. If you're 55+, white, a homeowner, and you regularly wear polo shirts with khakis for fun it's like your whole brain got scooped out and replaced with conservative dipshit madness spinkled with minion memes. It's so common it should be a statistically noticeable blip.
They've become so heightened, so hair-trigger, they really do froth at the mouth once any of their activation words are said. They're often deep into Qanon, they concoct elaborate conspiracy theories that get more confusing every year, and they can't tear themselves away from Facebook. Is the problem they weren't weaned onto the internet like younger people? Like when I was growing up the internet as it is now was being constructed, I watched it grow and learned how to parse information presented to me. Older folk slammed face first onto the internet in like 2015, without the decades of acclimating to it.
Stories like yours and mine are so common I'm surprised there isn't yet an industry of family counseling specifically about de-programming reactionary parents/grandparents (there probably is already and that makes me sad)