Why this conservative radio host quit after Trump's victory

Sean Illing · Tuesday, January 03, 2017, 10:39 am

“I don't see how this ends well. I don't see how it gets better.” — John Ziegler

John Ziegler hosts a Los Angeles-based nationally syndicated radio talk show. Or at least he did until a couple of weeks ago. On Sunday, December 19, he called it quits. And he did it because of Donald Trump.

A lifelong conservative, Ziegler opposed Trump from the beginning of the 2016 presidential campaign, and he paid a steep price for that opposition. Conservatives — or the kinds of conservatives who listen to talk radio — weren’t interested in contrarianism. They wanted affirmation, not information; loyalty, not principled disagreement.

Ziegler’s honesty was not rewarded.

“In a very real sense,” Ziegler wrote in a column for Mediaite.com, “my show was an experiment to test whether it was possible for a radio show that simply called things like I saw them, and which didn’t consciously pander to the bulk of the conservative audience which listens to talk radio, could endure.

“I not only failed in that experiment, I did so in such a definitive fashion that I knew that there was no hope for a dramatic turnaround.”

On air, Ziegler called Trump a “con man” and a fake conservative. Like many others, he insisted Trump was grossly unqualified for the job. But his listeners revolted. Along with threatening emails, tweets, and Facebook messages, he was attacked as a “Hillary-lover” and a “Jewboy” (he is neither Jewish nor a Clinton supporter). “I lost some of my biggest supporters over Trump,” he told me.

None of this was surprising to Ziegler. He believes that the economics of talk radio, transformed in large part by the internet and cable news, put people like him at a disadvantage. Talk radio has essentially become a safe space for insulated conservatives. The business model makes it near-impossible to succeed without selling out or, as he puts it, without relying on “verbal prostitution to maintain levels of revenue.”

Charlie Sykes, who hosted an influential conservative radio show in Wisconsin for nearly three decades, found himself in a similar position earlier this year. I interviewed Sykes in October, after he announced he was ending his show at the end of the year, and his experience mirrored Ziegler’s.

“Every time I brought up the presidential race, my email box filled up with people saying I’ve betrayed them and that I’m a turncoat.” Sykes’s opposition to Trump was a deal breaker for many of his listeners. “It’s the worst cult of personality that I’ve seen since the 1930s,” Sykes told me.

On Thursday, I spoke with Ziegler about the decision to end his show and about the state of conservative media more generally. I asked him about the incentive structure of conservative media, why his audience doesn’t trust the press, and if he believes conservative media has ruined conservatism.

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http://www.vox.com/conversations/2017/1/3/14103136/donald-trump-conservative-media-talk-radio-john-ziegler-rush-limbaugh