Bob Costas rips ‘delusional’ Republicans: ‘If you support Trump, you’re living in another reality’

Sportscaster Bob Costas lit into Republicans, CPAC and former President Donald Trump as delusional, fantasists, dummies or, if well-educated, pure cynics.

In an interview on St. Louis radio station KFTK, the longtime face of NBC Sports didn’t limit his fire to a few fringe lawmakers. The entire party, almost, is unmoored from reality, he said.

“The Republican Party, by and large, with exceptions — Romney, Liz Cheney — they aren’t just right-wing, they’re living in a delusional world,” Mr. Costas said.

“No party or movement led by Donald Trump can ever be about honesty, integrity, or any sort of consistent principle or any rational understanding of patriotism. This was a guy who was willing to subvert the very pillars of democracy if it suited him,” Mr. Costas, now a CNN contributor, said this week on “The Dave Glover Show.”

Part of the reason for Mr. Trump’s rise, he said, is social media and the breakdown of the three major networks’ former news monopoly. This spread of information sources has fed delusion, according to Mr. Costas.

“But you wouldn’t have these wild differences where people just decide on their own realities” under the previous news monopoly, he said. “And if you support Trump, you’re living in another reality.”

Mr. Costas also called the recent CPAC convention in Dallas as “a Mardi Gras of lunacy and ignorance, but it’s a proud, defiant ignorance.”

But ignorance doesn’t excuse some in “MAGA world,” he said.

“You got some people, like Mo Brooks and Louie Gohmert, who are so dumb they need to be watered like a house plant, but then you have people like Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley who are better than that,” he said. “They’re Ivy League-educated. They know better. But they’re so cynical, they’re willing to subvert principle because they know that their careers are tied to somehow either supporting Trump or finessing some sort of feigned support for Trump so they can still appeal to some portion of that base.”