Conservative radio host Charlie Sykes criticized Fox News and talk radio for creating a “safe space” for conservative audiences that don’t want to have their views challenged and faulted conservative media for failing to push back against birtherism in a new interview posted Saturday.
In an interview with David Gregory on Gregory’s podcast, Sykes warned that the conservative media is unable to respond to untruths that he says Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump is peddling.
“Donald Trump is the perfect storm of a candidate who sill say things that are absolutely untrue,” Sykes said. “He has an alternative media that will cover for him, that will defend him, that will rationalize for him. And then an audience that, quite frankly, doesn’t want to hear that their guy is a liar. They want to be in a safe space. They want the safe space. Talk radio is a ‘safe space.’ Fox News is a ‘safe space.'”
Sykes, an influential right-leaning host in Wisconsin who is part of the “Never Trump” group of conservatives, made national news in March for the aggressive questioning of Trump on his show. Sykes pressed the case against Trump then, and on Saturday argued that the conservative media has not done enough to push back against Trump and specifically against Trump’s suggestions that President Obama was not born in the U.S.
When Trump gained popularity among conservatives for questioning Obama’s birthplace, he and others in the conservative media “just chose to shrug their shoulders, look the other way, figure this is not going to be a big deal,” Sykes said. “And here we have the nation’s premier birther, who is what, 50 days away from being president of the United States?”
Trump acknowledged on Friday for the first time that Obama was born in the United States, after suggesting for years that he was not.
That and other conspiracy theories have currency among many conservatives, Sykes charged, because conservative news audiences inhabit “alternative reality silos” in which facts or views that run counter to their preferred narratives are discounted.
In his interview with Gregory, Sykes warned that there would be a “reckoning for the conservative media” that has embraced Trump, whose positions and views differ from some traditional conservative ideas.
