Conservative Radio Host Admits Right-Wing Media Created a 'Monster' That Doesn't Believe Facts

Photo Credit: Flickr / Gage Skidmore

While a fair number of GOPers have either outright stated their opposition to Donald Trump or evaded the question with enough skill to avoid providing an on-the-record endorsement, they’ve steered clear of admitting the role the right-wing media machine has played in paving the way for Trump’s rise. In fact, blowhards like Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh keep pushing the right-wing lies that have made their party into a group that believes in everything but the truth.

Charlie Sykes, a conservative radio host, may be the first of his ilk to take responsibility for turning the right—those who pushed Trump to the top of the bill—into a crowd of fact-denying, media-mistrusting, Trump lie-swallowing, angry “monsters” who cannot be swayed by reality. He goes on record saying as much in an upcoming interview with Business Insider’s Oliver Darcy, who tweeted an excerpt ahead of the full text being published.

“We’ve basically eliminated any of the referees, the gatekeepers,” Sykes states. “There’s nobody. Let’s say that Donald Trump basically makes whatever you want to say, whatever claim he wants to make. And everybody knows it’s a falsehood. The big question of my audience, it is impossible for me to say that, ‘By the way, you know it’s false.’ And they’ll say, ‘Why? I saw it on Allen B. West.’ Or they’ll say, ‘I saw it on a Facebook page.’ And I’ll say, ‘the New York Times did a fact-check.’ And they’ll say, ‘Oh, that’s the New York Times. That’s bullshit.' There’s nobody. You can’t go to anybody and say, ‘Look, here are the facts.’”

In what he calls one of the “disorienting realities of the political year,” Sykes says, “there’s no way to break through it. And I swim upstream because if I don’t say these things from some of these websites, then suddenly I have sold out. Then they’ll ask what’s wrong with me for not repeating these stories that I know not to be true.”

“There’s got to be a reckoning on all this,” Sykes stated, forebodingly. “We’ve created this monster.”

“And look, I’m a conservative talk show host. All conservative talk show hosts have basically established their brand as being contrasted with the mainstream media. So we have spent 20 years demonizing the liberal mainstream media. And by the way, a lot has been justifiable. There is real bias. But at a certain point you wake up and you realize you have destroyed the credibility of any credible outlet out there. And I feel, to a certain extent, that we are reaping the whirlwind at that,” he continued. “And I have to look in the mirror and ask myself, to what extent did I contribute?"

Interviewed @SykesCharlie recently for story on conservative media I'm working on. Worth reading what he had to say pic.twitter.com/cqsVOabG7Q

— Oliver Darcy (@oliverdarcy) August 14, 2016