‘What the F*ck Was ABC Thinking?’ Charlie Sykes Warns Media Caving to Trump ‘Makes Him More Dangerous’

Charlie Sykes, the longtime conservative talk radio host turned leading figure of the “Never Trump” movement, spoke to Mediaite’s Alex Griffing this week about the current state of the media, the Trump opposition, and what’s left that can actually restrain Trump’s worst impulses.

Sykes was one of the founders of and the former editor in chief of the Bulwark before “jumping off the rat wheel of crazy” – as he called it – in February of 2024 to spend time focused on life outside of Trump. He remains a regular figure on MSNBC and is now on Substack with over 75,000 subscribers for his “To The Contrary” blog. In his conversation with Mediaite, Sykes points out what he sees as the “troubling indications” that many leaders in corporate media, starting with ABC News, have already surrendered to President Donald Trump.

Sykes also argued that the anti-Trump movement, which had fallen into “shock and despondency” following Trump’s election, has slowly reemerged and may be finding its footing as Trump’s presidency rubs enough people the wrong way. He also, however, offered a warning to those in the media who are critical of Trump.

“I think there’s a danger of talking to ourselves and becoming stale and falling back on just a series of things that have become cliches. They’re not untrue, but using the same phraseology, the same talking points that have not actually been effective, is probably not the most effective strategy,” Sykes warned while arguing that those in the media should work to highlight the individuals and personal stories of those negatively impacted by Trump’s policies.

While noting that Trump has few guardrails left to restrain him as fear of impeachment, Congressional oversight, and negative headlines no longer really worry Trump, Sykes argues there is still one thing he respects – power. He argues that if the center-right and center-left can form a large enough “coalition of the decent,” Trump will take notice. “Because once Trump’s illusion of power, of irresistible power, is broken, then I think we can deal with him on a more human level,” Sykes concluded.

Below is a full transcript of the conversation, lightly edited for clarity:

Griffing: So just to start off, we’re almost 100 days in on Trump 2.0. And I want to open with a broad question. How do you think the media is doing this time around? It seems a lot of criticism is out there, that Trump is still kind of running circles around everybody. He is flooding the zone and dominating at all times. How do you think the press is doing?

Sykes: Well, I don’t want to be pedantic about it, but I mean, you know, the question these days is what exactly is the media? What are we talking about here? Because there are so many different outlets here. And I think that one of the things that Trump did, has done over the last decade is to break the media, or at least the media as we understood it. He’s gone around the media. He’s created his alternative media outlets. I think to a certain extent, he feels that he is immune from accountability from what we used to think of as the, as, you know, the guardians of truth. The reality is, is that Donald Trump has flooded the zone. His first hundred days have been one of shock and awe.

I will say that it’s sort of easy, I think, to dump on legacy media, but some of the best reporting that we’ve had on the first hundred days, the ups and the downs, has come from outlets like the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, whatever the challenge is. They might face an ownership and the editorial pages. The news departments have still done a good job, I think, of asking the tough questions, but overall, the media landscape has been so broken up and so shattered.

And, and we can’t talk about the media. I’m sorry to go on here Alex, but we can’t talk about the media in the first hundred days without talking about the premature capitulation by some of the biggest entities. I mean, I think that one of the most consequential and threatening surrenders that took place relatively early was Jeff Bezos and the Washington Post, ABC’s settlement of a completely bogus lawsuit by Donald Trump, I think was a harbinger of things to come. And still hanging over all of this is what’s gonna happen with CBS when you have the executive producer of 60 Minutes resigning.

So I do think that there are these troubling indications, indicators there that at the very moment when the press is under siege and when academic freedom is under siege, when a free press is under siege. To have so many surrenders from corporate media has been very, very disturbing.

Griffing: I think it’s such a good point that you bring up about how much really incredible reporting has come out from, you know, quote unquote, legacy media, you know, all the, the influencers on X or Twitter are really still just sharing the reporting of real reporters of true investigative journalists. And then they’re repackaging it, they’re screenshotting it, and then that’s what they send around as if it’s their own kind of content. It’s definitely broken.

Sykes: That’s a really good point, how much of the debate may look like it’s taking place on social media, but a lot of it is what was just reported in the Atlantic, what’s in the New York Times, what has the Washington Post discovered about what’s going on. And the coverage of the various issues I think has been solid. I mean, I do know that there are the critics who think that the media has done too much to normalize Donald Trump, and we can talk about that. 

Because I do think that the Trump era has exposed some of the downsides of access journalism. There has been, I think, a tendency to treat Trump as if he is a quasi-normal politician. But you know, but by and large there’s still been aggressive investigative reporting and analysis of things like what Elon Musk is doing, what’s happening in the Department of Defense, Pete Hegseth’s meltdown, and of course the consequences for Wall Street and Main Street of the tariffs.

Griffing: Kind of focusing in on the criticism a bit, you know, there’s a lot I think of anger at the Democrats who are completely out of power at the moment. And I think especially on the left, a lot of people feel that the Democrats aren’t doing enough to maybe bolster the institutions like these journalists who are still trying to keep Trump accountable. Do you see that there is any kind of growing anti-Trump movement?

Sykes: Well, yes, and I think it took some time. I think that there was, if Donald Trump was launching shock and awe, you also did have that sort of shock and despondency among the Democrats who were, let’s face it, were demoralized and depressed after the election. I mean, you saw that in every sort of way, and it’s taken them a while to get their feet. It’s also, we need to be a little bit more patient sometimes, I know that we’ve divided the world up into 10-second news cycles, but it takes Americans a long time to be aroused. But when they are aroused, they can be quite formidable.

And I think in the first hundred days, what you saw was kind of, you know, stunned defeatism on the part of many Democrats. They didn’t know. And of course, you had leaders like Chuck Schumer who, you know, have not really adapted to the new era. I mean, when you have senators who talk about writing strongly worded letters, it feels very, very tone deaf, but I think what you’re seeing is as we reach the hundred days, is that people are now, I think they’re finding their feet. You see this in the public opinion polls, which I think is going to embolden them.

And I think that they’re starting to realize that Donald Trump is not a hundred feet tall, that resistance is not futile, that he is not this unstoppable juggernaut, that, you know, what can we possibly do? I mean, there was a moment there when it felt like people were saying there are no guardrails. There are no limits. We all have to bend the knee or be destroyed. And now I think there’s more of a sense that he’s overreached. He’s overplayed his hand. There’s been so much hubris that let’s remember who we are and who he is.

But I guess another point is that I don’t think that people should put too much weight on what is the democratic leadership in Washington going to do. I think it’s more important what are the American people going to do? What’s civil society going to do? Will it push back against, you know, what we’re seeing?

Griffing: So I’m kind of exactly on that. I want to play this quick clip from the governor of Illinois, J.B. Pritzker, in New Hampshire last night, calling for a kind of grassroots civil disobedience movement. So I kind of want to get your reaction on the other side. So here it is.

Pritzker: Never before in my life have I called for mass protests, for mobilization, for disruption, but I am now. These Republicans cannot know a moment of peace. They have to understand that we will fight their cruelty with every megaphone and microphone that we have. We must castigate them on the soapbox and then punish them at the ballot box.

Sykes: Well, you know, good, good. Good for him. I mean, it’s important to get off the mat. And I think that one of the key points there is that we cannot treat this as if it’s same old, same old. You know, if Donald Trump represents an existential threat to the constitutional democracy, then I think we need to behave that way.

Now, having said that, and I understand that one of the most dangerous things in American politics today is to engage in any kind of nuance. The kinds of protests are important. Donald Trump would like nothing more than mass protests with an extremist tinge or with acts of violence. He would like nothing more than a pretext to invoke the Insurrection Act or to point to dangerous radicals. So I do think that this is one of the things that needs to be done with a certain amount of prudence. I won’t use the word caution, prudence.

I think that the American people need an outlet to do it, but don’t overplay the hand. And I think this is always an issue with the left. Are these going to turn into something that Donald Trump then can weaponize? And we know that he has the ability to do that through social media. So again, the question is, how can you do it in a way that is likely actually to advance your cause?

And I do think that there are mass movements that have made a tremendous difference. You go back into the civil rights movement, the early 1960s, not the late 1960s, the early 60s, you know, the movements of Gandhi, non-violence, and I think that this ought to be very, very important. So, but there are other ways of doing it as well. I mean, you’re seeing people showing up at the town hall meetings.

I also think that it’s important to have different kinds of pushback. I think one of the biggest negatives of the first hundred days, the most distressing and depressing, was watching these big law firms cave in. So when you start having law firms now resist, when you have universities beginning to resist, when you have other entities of civil society saying, in the private sector, saying, thus far, no further, we’re drawing red lines. That, I think, is also important, there are still checks and balances on this guy.

Because once Trump’s illusion of power, of irresistible power, is broken, then I think we can deal with him on a more human level. If you’re following what I’m saying, it’s the, was the, I think the sense that people were shocked by what was happening, and by the way, they should not have been shocked. Because Donald Trump told us over and over again what he was going to do. His campaign was Trump in full. There were those of us who were warning that Trump 2.0 was gonna be very different than Trump 1.0. All the smart kids said we were being hysterical, that we suffered from Trump derangement syndrome, and yet here we are. Now, you know, I would like to say that our warnings were vindicated, but it doesn’t feel good, because, in fact, this is a very, very dangerous moment.

Griffing: I think the point about prudence is a really important one, especially– Something that we do a lot. We spend a lot of our time covering the pro-Trump media and especially what they pick up, what they kind of run with. And it becomes kind of a dominant narrative for a long time. Something like Pritzker saying, ‘Republicans can know no peace,’ even wrapped in the most benign way that can really take legs in a place like Fox News.

Sykes: Oh, absolutely.

Griffing: So my question to you about that is, in the pro-Trump media, how do you think the left or maybe kind of the more critical anti-Trump media can counter those narratives? Fox seems to be, you know, their ratings are higher than ever– they’re just very powerful.

Sykes: Well, look, you know, there are certain narratives that are not going to be countered. You know, we have seen the rise of, I mean, I’ve talked about this before, that we had information bubbles, we had echo chambers, and then they morphed into something different, which was these hermetically sealed alternative reality silos, which are impenetrable. And I think that we need to acknowledge that, that there’s really no way to break into that for the hardcore MAGA types. But that’s not the whole electorate.

And I think you’re seeing this in some of the public opinion polls. And my guess, my advice would be to simply tell stories. Don’t, there’s a danger I think of just falling into using the same phrases and the same narratives over and over and again. And I think that we need to find fresh ways of explaining what’s going on. And part of it is that we’re in an era now where the policies are playing out in real life. And those real-life stories are very, very compelling.

And I think this is one of the strongest things that the media has done, using that term broadly, which is to focus not just on the internal politics of Washington, D.C., but how it’s playing out in people’s lives, the specific impact on families, on communities, on schools, what it means for children, what it means for senior citizens. And I think this is where people need to focus because I do think, and I’ve been doing this for now, you know, this, well for a minute, I’ve been doing this for 10 years it feels like.

And I think there’s a danger of talking to ourselves and becoming stale and falling back on just a, you know a series of things that have become cliches. They’re not untrue, but using the same phraseology, the same talking points that have not actually been effective, is probably not the most effective strategy. And I am talking to the entire infrastructure of talking heads that sometimes seems more interested in fan service than it is in actual persuasion.

Griffing: I think it’s a really interesting point, especially when you think about cable news, you know, Fox News, some of their top-rated hosts are Jesse Watters, Greg Gutfeld, who do bring kind of more entertainment vibe to what they’re doing. I mean, Gutfeld’s show is political satire, it’s comedy in a way. You think CNN, MSNBC, your point about centering more personal stories, you know, if you listen to Fox News last six months, you hear Lake and Riley, you hear the names of individuals over and over and over. Is this kind of something you think CNN and MSNBC should shift toward, kind of emulate Fox in a way?

Sykes: Well, I never want to use the term they should emulate Fox. What I do think is that they need to, again, not get caught in the information loop. You have to ask yourself, okay, are we actually telling people something that they need to know or have we decided that we’re going to sort of become a warm bath where people can sort of soak in ideological confirmation of all their biases.

And I understand how hard that is. All of this is difficult, I think, because it’s so easily misunderstood. It is possible to understand what the other side is saying without necessarily validating it or going to both-sidesism. I mean, to understand, to take seriously issues that might affect swing voters that they actually care about. And I’ll be specific.

I mean the reality is there are a lot of swing voters that actually were concerned about inflation. So simply denying that inflation was a problem was a mistake. There are swing voters that were concerned about crime and simply telling them that crime is a myth is basically says we don’t care about what you think. The border was a real problem during the Biden years and that needs to be addressed. There was a reason why the Trump campaign spent more than a hundred million dollars on one ad, one ad involving transgender surgeries and athletes. And yet, if you listen to Democrats and folks on the left, that issue didn’t exist at all.

So simply saying these are fake issues, don’t pay any attention to them means that you shut yourself off from things that voters are talking about. The Joe Biden age story was very frustrating for a lot of folks because you could not engage in a conversation with a voter anywhere in the country without his age coming up. And yet, if you brought this up in progressive media or on certain Never Trump sites, you got flooded with what we began to call blue MAGA, which was don’t talk about it, don’t bring it up. It’s not relevant.

I do think that if you’re going to confront the enemy, you need to understand your enemy’s strengths as well as his weaknesses. And I think that this is one of those moments. You know, are we going to confront Trumpism by denying Trumpism’s appeal? And then again, I hope that my record is clear enough what I think about Donald Trump and what I think about all of his works. So I am, I am not doing this both-sidesism thing. I’m just saying that, do we, are we serious about confronting it? Or are we just talking to ourselves? And I think there’s been way too much just talking to ourselves and self-stroking that has not been effective in going after Trump. Although I do think that there’s a shift in opinion now.

Griffing: I was a very avid listener of your podcast and I think this is why It was great– I think what you really focused, what you really centered in the podcast was kind of always going back to these kind of old school values of just finding basic issues and kind of relating to people on basic decency. 

These are the things that we talk around the kitchen table. That can relate to anybody across the partisan divide. Do you think, or it was even just about good government, kind of looking at the corruption. Like the idealism that we’re raised with in middle school even, basic civics, that is maybe not a sexy issue, but it is something that reaches across the aisle. Do you think anybody right now in the media has kind of taken up that mantle? Is there any way for the left to kind of try to breach into the pro-Trump silo that way?

Sykes: Well, I do think you can reach into the Trump silo, or at least in some of his base, the silo is impenetrable and I don’t know if it’s just the left. I mean, the fact is that I do think that there is a center, right, center, left coalition out there, the coalition of the decent that are not ideological. I mean many of our divisions are left versus right on a horizontal line. I do think that there’s also a vertical line, support for democracy and for basically the rule of law. And I do think that there’s a possibility there.

Now, you talk about the kitchen table, I also think about, for lack of a better analogy, kids at sidelines, the values that those parents want to instill in their children. There is still a fundamental sense of fairness and decency in the American people that’s separate from politics. And this is something that I just struggle with all the time, this division, the people that I know, many of whom who voted for Donald Trump are in their own lives decent, honorable people who would never behave in the way that Trump behaves, who have an entirely different set of values when you separate it from politics. So they would never hire someone like Donald Trump to take care of their kids, coach their kids’ football games. They wouldn’t hire him to walk their dogs. They would not do business with somebody like a Donald Trump.

And yet we’ve created politics as sort of this other zone where we have a completely different standard. We have the lowest standard. I wrote a piece for the Atlantic a couple of years ago. We actually now have the lowest possible standard for the presidency of the United States that we have for virtually any position, that you would not tolerate this behavior in a school principal, anybody, but we do tolerate it in the presidency.

That’s a long way around to answer your question, that yeah, if you appeal to those things, if you say, look, this is what Ronald Reagan said about America being a shining city on a hill, and if it must have walls, it should have doors that are open, you know, teeming with trade. Try to imagine those words coming out of Donald Trump’s mouth. Do you really want to be supporting Vladimir Putin? Do you want to treat children in this particular way?

And I still think that there’s a reservoir of goodwill out there that we can tap into if we don’t give in to the Americans are just as evil as Donald Trump, sneering at them. And by the way, I live in a crystal palace of faults, so I’m not throwing stones at other people because I’ve been there saying, what the F is wrong with the American people that would vote for him? So I’m backing off and saying, if you show people respect as opposed to disdain, you can have a conversation. If you begin the conversation by saying, you are a racist, sexist, homophobic bigot, and your mother’s ugly. No one wants to have that conversation continue. If there’s an assumption of goodwill, maybe we can persuade one another, but I honestly don’t know.

I do think, though, that don’t misread this moment as like, let’s double down on all of our priors. Let’s just scratch all of our ideological itches and then wonder why we keep losing elections.

Griffing: It kind of brings me back. I think that covers very well kind of like the media narrative of how, you know, to kind of get other people maybe to buy into this kind of a discourse. But politically, I wonder, you know, since Vice President Harris has lost, we haven’t heard much from someone like Liz Cheney. Where do you see, where and how do you see her fitting into US politics in the future? Has she, have the Democrats ever embraced her? Is it a third party?

Sykes: I, look, I would love to tell you that there’s room for a third party. There’s not in American politics. I was at a seminar just the other day with Adam Kinzinger down in Chicago. And somebody asked this and are things so broken that we need to consider having a third-party? And I said, yes, things are so broken. We should consider a third party, but it is not going to happen in American politics. Liz Cheney is an important political figure. I hope that she’s more outspoken. You know, she has every once in a while, but I mean, Adam Kinzinger was, you know, joined with her on January 6th. And he is very, very active in the media. He and I did a podcast over the weekend.

And so I do think it’s important for those voices to continue to speak up. And again, I would urge Democrats that this is not a good moment to engage in purity tests or, you know, constant debates about, well, what did, you know, Adam Kinzinger or Charlie Sykes say 15 years ago that we should never forgive them for.

Look, one of the things that Donald Trump has done is he’s basically said, I don’t care what you’ve done in the past. If you’re willing to come in and, you know, align with me, I will forgive you. And I’m not saying emulate him, but Democrats do need to understand that you’re going to need a coalition, and it is a potentially broad coalition. I want to give Kamala Harris credit for reaching out to that coalition. I know there are some of the smart kids on the left who think that it was a mistake for her to reach out to Liz Cheney and to others. I think that was a good move. It may not have paid off in November, but going forward, I think we need that. And I think it’s playing out in real time how important that coalition is going to be.

Griffing: Yeah, I think it’s a good point. If Tulsi Gabbard can be in Trump’s cabinet and RFK Jr., you have to have kind of an equal opposite movement on the other side. You need to win as many voters as you can. So just one last question for you, if I can. Trump has retaliated against some of his critics. Imagine people you know, are fairly familiar with, like Miles Taylor. Do you think the threat level against critics has gone up exponentially? You think maybe now journalists should kind of be looking over their shoulders?

Sykes: Yes. Yeah, absolutely. And I think it’s very difficult to overstate it. You had just last week, I mean, not only are they now arresting judges in my hometown of Milwaukee, but the same day that the attorney general was applauding the arrest of a sitting judge in the Milwaukee County Courthouse, they also threw out the guidelines that protected journalists from being subpoenaed.

Again, are we surprised? I mean, is there anything about Donald Trump that does not make you think that he will be restrained in using his power to go after the media? This is why I think ABC’s cave-in and CBS’s potential cave-ins are so deadly, because if the media does not stand together, if the press does not stand together against this campaign of intimidation, then he will pick them off one by one.

So in terms of using the power of the federal government as a cudgel of retribution against his critics, I think the threat level has risen exponentially and is continuing to rise because Donald Trump does believe that he’s above the law and that he will use all the levers of power to intimidate. And by the way, every single time someone caves in, it emboldens him.

Why would Donald Trump think that he can intimidate the media? Well, because the media has been intimidated. I mean, what the fuck was ABC thinking about? Did ABC think that they were going to make themselves safer? If Paramount gives in on CBS, do they think that press freedom will be greater? Does Jeff Bezos kissing Donald Trump’s ass? Does he honestly think that that’s going to, you know, save democracy from darkness?

What each and every time somebody bends to Donald Trump, it makes him feel stronger and he becomes more aggressive. The law firms that thought, Oh, if we just cut a deal with him, we’ll be safe. No, it made it more dangerous for everybody else, and the pressure on them will become more intense. So yes, I think people ought to be alarmed. And I think that you need to push back that what he’s doing with Chris Krebs is shocking.

But I think if there is strong resistance, if there’s a pushback, if a return to fundamental constitutional values, Donald Trump’s going to stumble. Can I just say one thing about this broad coalition? One of the most important things that’s going to happen, I think people are going to see this playing out, is watch what’s happening to the conservative judiciary. I think that there is a segment on the left that just simply assumes that if you’re a conservative judge, you must be pro-Trump. Trump thinks so, and he’s wrong.

And I think you’re starting to see even the Federalist Society folks going, this is alarming, and you’re starting to see a coalescing of opinion, this opinion by Judge Wilkinson on the Fourth Circuit about the illegal rendition of a Maryland man to El Salvador was eloquent and powerful. You’re starting to see even some of the most conservative judges, not Alito and Thomas, but other conservative justices who are saying, no, we are going to draw those lines.

You will need people who used to be on the other side who look into their consciences and I think that the conservative judiciary is going to prove to be essential. They have succeeded in purging almost all of those traditional principled conservatives from elected office. They’re gone, but you cannot purge federal judges. And so they’re still there to the extent that there are principled conservatives and they will play a significant role.

Griffing: Yeah, it does seem, I mean, as you say, one thing we’ve known about Trump for a long time, and you can see it in his comments about Putin or Xi, is he respects power. And maybe, you know, Amy Coney Barrett might be the last person with power that can stop him. 

Well, thank you, Charlie, so much for speaking with me. I really appreciate it. I think your insights on just how to reach across the aisle and what it will take to build that coalition are incredibly important at this time.