It’s even more brain dead than that. Nick’s audience has always been almost 100% people who — at the very least — have a baseline inclination toward skepticism of government involvement in private lives. To hear Barnes tell it, they were all a bunch of boot-licking statists all along.
Nick hasn’t gone quite that far, but he has stated outright that people who think the case against him is legit are suckers of (circumcised) government cock.
Nick and Barnes are both shameless, fundamentally dishonest grifters, as many of us have known for a while. It’s only right that Barnes’ reputation should take repeated hits along with Nick’s.