title:  Right-Wing Radio Host Regrets That Conservatives Were Turned Into Fact-Free ‘Monsters’
text: As Donald Trump continues to be showered with adulation from conservatives, one right-wing radio host is seriously regretting the role right-wing media has played in his rise.The Republican nominee s campaign has been devoid of facts since the first day and his conservative supporters have eaten up every word he has uttered with absolute relish, from claiming that the election is rigged, to calling President Obama the  founder of ISIS,  to claiming that most Americans like him. Not to mention his relentless accusations that the mainstream media is just making stuff up because they are in league with Hillary Clinton.In addition, Trump and his supporters deny science and math and attack anyone who disagrees with them as  unpatriotic traitors  who should be targeted with violence or suppressed from participating in the democratic process.The bottom line is that conservatives have been drilled by conservative media to hate facts and any media source that reports them, which is why an extremist con man like Trump is now the leader of the Republican Party.And one right-wing radio host now regrets the way he and others like him have turned conservative voters into fact-hating zombies. We ve basically eliminated any of the referees, the gatekeepers,  conservative radio host Charlie Sykes told Business Insider during an interview conducted by Oliver Darcy. 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,  he explained. 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 upstream because if I don t say these things from some of these website, 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. Sykes then warned that there will be consequences for what conservative media has done over the last few decades. When this is all over, we have to go back,  Sykes said, presumably back to a time when facts mattered.  There s got to be a reckoning on all this. We ve created this monster. 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 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? Indeed, conservative now look upon trusted mainstream media outlets such as NBC and the New York Times as their enemies simply because they report facts. This has led to the rise of conservative outlets such as Fox News, which often twists facts or lies outright to make their viewers angry in an effort to steer them toward a certain political viewpoint. And that is precisely why Fox has been called the propaganda arm of the GOP.But all of that demonizing of facts and the mainstream media outlets that report them has created the political climate in which con men like Donald Trump are thriving. In fact, Trump s supporters love lies so much that they didn t even notice or care when Trump told them to their faces that he has been lying to them.American democracy could be irrevocably harmed by right-wing hucksters who seriously believe the mainstream media has a liberal bias. The problem is that facts are not bipartisan. Something is either a fact or it isn t. And just because the facts are not on the side of conservatives and their bullshit policies and ideas that does not give them the right to demonize them for their own gain. That s how we end up with paranoid idiots like Trump getting this close to becoming president. And stupidity and paranoia are the last things America needs in the White House.Featured Image: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images