I don't believe it was intentional. Doug could have done a "Nick is my friend, thoughts and prayers to his family, I hope he gets through this"
I think if Doug would've said something along the effect of "It's incredibly early in the case with Nick, and I'd like to wait for more information (body camera footage) or go through the process of an actual trial before I make any strong condemnations of his alleged actions" I think it'd probably go over better, because at least at this point in time, Nick is in fact presumed innocent and hasn't been convicted of child neglect or child endangerment. If he had even acknowledged that what information we currently do have at the moment looks bad for Nick, it'd look like he wasn't just outright sweeping, but it's like he's not even acknowledging the stuff that is publicly available is bad. Additionally, Doug keeps insisting that Nick never abused his children, but when people say child abuse, they don't only mean physical abuse. From what we've seen from multiple sources (Doug and Aaron), Nick hasn't beaten his children--nice, the bar for standards is so low it's effectively in hell--but that doesn't mean he hasn't abused them in other ways (including neglect), which is what people have been claiming the entire fucking time.
But instead Doug had to be a know-it-all and start talking about witch hunts and everyone in the town hating Nick.
If one person hates you, that could be a fluke. Two people hating you is a coincidence. Three people is a pattern. An entire fucking town hates you, and I suspect you're just a piece of shit who did something to earn it.
At some point Doug needs to ask himself what is more likely (and completely trash his own opinions and thoughts and feelings towards Nick, or at least temporarily put them asive to be even remotely objective):
-that there is no reason that people hate Nick, but they do
-there is a really good fucking reason (or reasons) that people hate Nick
It's delusional to acknowledge that a massive amount of people dislike Nick (using Doug's own words, everyone in town hates Nick) but the people in Nick's town who have met him in person and collectively decide he's a piece of shit are just all making it up to get him for criticizing the court.
Yeah, it's neat that people like Nick, Doug, and Barnes can claim it's a conspiracy because a lot of people native to Nick's area hate him and want to get him, but I'd like to see them fucking prove it. I don't give a shit about your conjecture, I give a shit about what you can prove, and right now I've seen no proof except for Barnes' retarded circular reasoning and Nick's, "Dude trust me."
Until then, I think the simplest answer is the most probable: People dislike Nick because he's acting like an abusive asshole, but the decision to report him is because of what they observed, and what they observed was bad.