Charlie Sykes Trashes His Audience

What does Charlie Sykes plan to do after Election Day, November 8, 2016?

What will he do when MSNBC and CNN have no use for him anymore? What will he do after he accomplishes putting Hillary Clinton in the White House?

His Never Trump gig is not going to last. 

Do you read his Twitter feed? Check it out.

Overwhelmingly, he tweets and retweets about Donald Trump. When he's not actively attacking Trump, meaning helping Hillary Clinton get elected, he's responding to comments about his anti-Trump appearances on Leftist media networks, in an embarrassing display of ego.

He seems very proud of this:

When a right-wing radio host reveals the truth https://t.co/qAmnKihv81 via @phillydotcom@

— Charlie Sykes (@SykesCharlie) August 17, 2016

The danger of the right’s noise machine: Years of misinformation led to Trump’s rise https://t.co/Ae4D6eyXSu via @Salon

— Charlie Sykes (@SykesCharlie) August 17, 2016

From Salon:

And today, for the first time, some conservatives in the #NeverTrump camp are seeing where their decades-long attacks on the mainstream media and the “reality based community” have led. Right-wing radio talk show host Charlie Sykes from Wisconsin gave an interview lamenting the situation with reporter Oliver Darcy who put up an excerpt on twitter. Sykes also appeared on MSNBC’s “All In” last night where he said this:

Over the years conservative talk show hosts, and I’m certainly one of them, we’ve done a remarkable job of challenging and attacking the mainstream media. But perhaps what we did was also the destroy any sense of a standard. Where do you go to have any sense of the truth? You have Donald Trump come along and the man says things that are demonstrably untrue on a daily basis. My experience has been look, we live in an era when every drunk at the end of the bar has a Twitter account and maybe has a blog and when you try to point out “this is not true, this is a lie” and then you cite the Washington Post or the New York Times, their response is “oh that’s the mainstream media.” So we’ve done such a good job of discrediting them that there’s almost no place to go to be able to fact check.

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

CHARLIE SYKES: We've basically eliminated any of the referees, the gatekeepers. 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.' And I have to say that's one of the disorienting realities of this political year. You can be in this alternative media reality and there's no way to break through it. And I swim up stream 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.

When this is all over, we have to go back. There's got to be a reckoning on all this. We've created this monster. And look, I'm a conservative talk show host. All conservative hosts have basically established their brand as being contrasted to 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 am feeling, to a certain extent, that we are reaping the whirlwind at that. And I have to look in the mirror and ask myself, 'To what extent did I contribute?'

What is Sykes saying here?

He's validating all the negative things the Left says about conservative talk radio, the "right's noise machine."

He's saying his audience is incapable of discerning the facts. He's calling his audience intellectually incompetent.

Sykes has spent a few months now appearing at the behest of Leftist media outlets. He's made it clear he doesn't respect his audience, that people on board with Trump are utter buffoons. They're Trumpkins, incapable of rational thought.

He's whining about people considering a New York Times fact check to be bullshit? He's got to be kidding. Now, the NYT is credible and not giving a Leftist spin? What the hell? He says there's real bias but yet he regrets taking part in destroying the credibility of the mainstream media.

That's an incoherent mess.

He complains about being accused of selling out when he's spent months chastising some Republicans for selling their souls to support Trump.

There's also an arrogance to his pining over the loss of gatekeepers. Thought must be controlled.

There's nobody to offer the truth, except him, of course.

Poor Sykes is swimming upstream, having to battle what he considers the idiocy of those supporting the Republican nominee for president. He's frustrated by inaccurate information but also by those unwilling to accept a Hillary Clinton presidency. President Hillary is something he apparently is more than willing to tolerate. There's nothing conservative about that.

Sykes is certainly getting a lot of mileage out of his Never Trump-ism, garnering a lot of cable TV time, having the extremists of the Left fawn over him. But, that comes at a price.

Sykes is blowing himself up in the sense that he's abandoning the conservative persona he's peddled for years. He disrespects his audience and brags about it. He supports the Left's assessment of conservative media as dangerous with an audience of dunces.

A bridge too far.