Believe they're making a joke. It's an annual tradition for Very Important Liberal Journalists to do that in the run-up to every election year, where they write a puff piece and wax poetic about how they had waffles with some rural Republicans and they're Really Just Sensible People because They Were Nice To Me.
Obviously, this misses the fact that being nice to someone personally means jack fucking shit about what policy or politics you support. Plenty of fascists are polite to you face-to-face - that doesn't mean they're anything resembling good citizens.
As a progressive who grew up in a very conservative area, I know this way too well. Plenty of people who are sweet and kind and polite to you, but will casually drop the N-bomb in conversation and talk about how 'those people' need to be 'kicked out' or how they wish they were at the border, where they'd 'shoot all the illegals coming over, not even kidding'.