The Reason Roundtable

When it Comes To Trump, the Bulwark's Charlie Sykes Is 'All Out of Fucks To Give'

01.11.2019 - By The Reason RoundtablePlay

Download our free app to listen on your phone

Download on the App StoreGet it on Google Play

"The conservative [movement] needs to be rethought in a variety of ways," says Charlie Sykes, the editor in chief of The Bulwark, the conservative website started in part by William Kristol in the wake of the demise of The Weekly Standard. "There's no question that Trumpism represents a repudiation of much of the conservative tradition, but we're not going to be able to simply turn the clock back."

A longtime radio host and best-selling author based in Milwaukee and early critic of Donald Trump, Sykes says that The Bulwark, whose motto is "conservatism conserved," is a place where the broadly defined right, including libertarians, can go to think through what happened to the Republican Party and what might come next in American politics. Calling Turning Point USA's Charlie Kirk an opportunistic "grifter," Sykes tells Reason that "to the extent that Republicans lash themselves to the mast of Trumpism...they make it more possible that we're going to have President Bernie Sanders and fully nationalized health care."

Photo credit: St. Martin's Press.

More episodes from The Reason Roundtable