Charlie Sykes, the influential conservative talk radio host, has done some soul searching in the months since Donald Trump became the Republican Party standard-bearer, saying in a recent interview that he understands conservative media personalities have “created this monster.”
The Milwaukee radio host, who has been strongly anti-Trump, told Business Insider’s Oliver Darcy that conservative media talking heads, himself included, have “spent 20 years demonizing the liberal mainstream media.” While Sykes argued some of the criticism is “justifiable,” he said those years of attack have destroyed the credibility of media companies trying to fight Trump’s fact-proof campaign with deep reporting.
“When this is all over, we have to go back. There’s got to be a reckoning on all this,” Sykes said, according to an interview excerpt Darcy tweeted on Sunday. “We’ve created this monster.”
“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?’” he continued.
In response to Sykes remarks, conservative blogger Erick Erickson also took stock of his role fostering a movement that led to Trump’s candidacy.
“For some, like me, perhaps we pushed too hard on issues and held too many people to many promises we took more literally than we should. Perhaps we encouraged activists to have too little grace for others,” Erickson wrote at The Resurgent.
It’s worth reading the full excerpt, via Oliver Darcy:
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
