He's not a troll and he's not an idiot. He's living up there in the Northeast and he's surrounded by people who are a lot more liberal than he is, and he's probably inundated with liberal viewpoints and so he's rightly skeptical of things people say from more conservative parts of the country.
I've argued with him many times in the past, and I do not doubt his integrity or his intelligence. He just has a different exposure to data than we have.
We should just do as good of a job as we can to articulate our positions and provide information that is as reliable as we can find it.
We are all surrounded by the same data and liberals. Some of us just are not so feeble minded as to believe their BS and repeat it.