TV host was scared because his mental world was being threatened. Indeed not only his but of people like him, especially people like him who benefit from that conceptual social order. But there is reality, and our conceptual social construct is just a tool that we use to organize ourselves and function as humans in reality.
There may (or may not) be such a thing as reality, but we can never know what that reality truly is. We socially and historically
construct a substitute for that unknowable reality, which we call 'reality', but which isn't the real thing (assuming it even exists). In fact, we
have to do this to be able to function as human beings or as a society at all. To challenge that constructed 'reality' is dangerous, not just for the individual doing the challenging, but for society as a whole.
"Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong remedies." - Marx (Groucho)