How one of the most influential #NeverTrumpers is battling his party’s nominee and questioning some long-held beliefs.
Charlie Sykes’ conscience is nagging him.
Since last year, the most influential political talk show host in Wisconsin has found out just how hard it is to be a #NeverTrump conservative on right-wing radio. Ever since Sykes began denouncing Donald Trump on the air—which he does just about every time he talks about the presidential election—he’s strained his relationships with the listeners of his daily radio show.
Sykes’ many arguments with listeners over Donald Trump’s serial outrages has exposed in much of his audience a vein of thinking—racist, anti-Constitutional, maybe even fascistic—that has shaken Sykes. It has left him questioning whether he and his colleagues in the conservative media played a role in paving the way for Trump’s surprising and unprecedented rise.
A few days before the Wisconsin congressional primary in early August, Sykes seized on remarks by Speaker of the House Paul Ryan’s opponent, Paul Nehlen, that raised the idea of deporting all Muslims, even American citizens. It’s the kind of inflammatory rhetoric that has become the norm during a presidential cycle that has featured Trump’s calls for immigration bans on Muslims, loyalty tests and mass deportations. Friendly and round-faced guy with glasses, Sykes, 61, doesn’t even try to conceal his disgust, but a large segment of his listeners, like Audrey from Oshkosh, are eager to defend ideas that Sykes believes violate fundamental conservative principles.
“Yeah! Let me make a comparison, and I don’t mean this in a bad way,” Audrey says. “They’re talking about phasing out breeding of pit bulls. Well, not all pit bulls are bad.”
“You’re comparing American citizens, Muslims, to rabid dogs,” Sykes responds.
“No, I’m saying, they’re talking about phasing out the breed because so many are bad. No one wants to phase out poodles! I mean, there’s no Lutherans doing this! We never know when one of these people are going to be radicalized.”
“One of these people,” says Sykes.
Sykes ends the call. He’s silent, broadcasting dead air. He looks upset, like he’s stopped breathing. He goes to a commercial break.
“OK, that doesn’t happen very often,” he says off-air. “I’m not usually absolutely speechless.” He says his listeners never talked like this until recently.
“Were these people that we actually thought were our allies?” he asks.
Sykes remains confident that Trump will lose badly in November, and he is equally fearful that Trump will drag longtime Republicans, like Senator Ron Johnson, down with him. This has Sykes thinking about the long-term future of the party and what might have precipitated its looming collapse. He wonders: Did “the faux outrage machine” of Breitbart.com and other right-wing outlets foment the noxious opinions that Trump has stoked so effectively on the trail?
“When I would deny that there was a significant racist component in some of the politics on our side, it was because the people I hung out with were certainly not,” Sykes says. “When suddenly, this rock is turned over, there is this—‘Oh shit, did I not see that?’
“I kind of had that reaction this morning, with that woman: Did we ignore this? There’s got to be some serious introspection, because of the things that we either didn’t see, or that we ignored, or that we enabled.”
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How @SykesCharlie is fighting the #NeverTrump good fight. |
Charlie Sykes’ Air War https://t.co/F4uWKT0s8E— Tom Nichols (@RadioFreeTom) August 21, 2016
Ron Johnson is no Conservative. The last thing I’m concerned about with Trump is his views on radical Islam.
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