I find two things interesting about your comment. The first is that you refer to conservatives in the general, and democrats in the specific. This may be simply inadvertant coincidence, but it stood out to me. In fact, you use those particular constructions twice:

> None of my conservative friends believe that nonsense about Obama, and none of my democrat friends believe that Trump is a Russian spy.

> The difference is that some of my conservative friends think it’s ok to have a swindly buffoon as president, and none of my democrat friends agree with that.

This suggests that in your mind, the "sides" you are seeing here are "conservative" vs. "democrat", which I find very interesting. One gets a party label, the other does not.

Secondly, to address your main point:

I don't understand why you feel that it's relevant what the "conservatives you know" believe. The political party that represents that demographic certainly strongly pushes those beliefs, does it not? Did the current President and party behind him not accuse the former one of being born in Kenya? Did they not and do they not still promote the belief that the issue of climate change is a "chinese conspiracy" (or alternatively, some ploy by the liberals and scientific establishment)? Did they prosecute a war on the "belief" that Iraq had WMDs (an action which cost your country several thousand soldiers' lives, and a few trillion dollars)?

Whatever your conservative friends may believe (let's leave aside the fact that you are making an argument via anecdote - your friends may or may not be representative of the demographic as a whole).. the party that represents them certainly pushes these understandings, and pushes them relentlessly, and justifies policy on the basis of those understandings.

I find your response to be similar to the article in question: generalized, abstracted, "stepping above".

Unfortunately, in this circumstance.. the details matter.