'Karma catching up': Conservative says GOP media's conspiracy theories are now biting them
After decades of radicalizing and misinforming their audience, right-wing media outlets and pundits are finally starting to face some kind of consequence for their actions, conservative anti-Trump pundit Charlie Sykes told MSNBC's Alex Wagner on Friday evening — but that by no means puts America in the clear of their influence.
"The mendacity knows no bound," said Wagner. "Beyond the elegant theory that could be useful for Democrats, there's also the reality that these, these lies hang on Republican elected officials. If you follow them upstream, you get to sitting senators. You wrote a piece in The Atlantic today talking about the way in which the fake electors plot in Wisconsin leads us to Ron Johnson. And that is not good for him. Can you talk a little bit more about how you see those dominoes falling?"
"Well, I think the story you just told," said Sykes. "People need to understand what an integral role to convince people that the election was stolen. Spreading the COVID conspiracy theories. That's important because many of the Republican politicians have followed where the base went. They have been influenced by the D'Souzas and the Epoch Times. Steve Bannon is also going to jail. There's a great moment of feeling there's karma catching up with the mendacity that you've been documenting."
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However, Sykes added, "to your point, this is so deeply engrained now in the Republican Party, and a Republican Party headed by Donald Trump."
"I mean, I would love to spike the football and say that, you know, we're now seeing reality make a comeback," Sykes continued. "But the big asterisk there is, can reality make a comeback in American politics as long as Donald Trump is possibly going to be elected the next President of the United States? Because ... these things are not, they're not simply discrete. Donald Trump has worked very closely with each of these outlets. They are crucial cogs in the disinformation web out there."
"And as long as Donald Trump is there, and as long as you have elected officials like Ron Johnson who are willing to carry water for the Big Lie in these conspiracy theories, they can still do a lot of damage, and will do a lot of damage," he concluded.
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