The Best People with Nicolle Wallace
Oliver Darcy on the Effects of a Steady Fox News Diet
19 Jan 2026
Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
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I think the news media, to some extent, has sort of, kind of come to terms with how to cover Donald Trump. But there hasn't been a reckoning in how we deal with the media environment that allowed Trump to be birthed into existence, really, in politics. And I don't think until actually there is that reckoning, Trump might go away, but, like, the problem is still there.
And it's actually getting worse and worse.
This week's guest is someone we've wanted to talk to forever and ever and ever. And now the news just demands his voice on about everything that we are covering. He staked out ground that no one rivaled at CNN for years and then went out on his own as the founder of Status. He now also helms the podcast Power Lines. This is the best people. And this is Oliver Darcy. Thank you for being here.
I'm so excited to be here, Nicole.
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Chapter 2: What insights does Oliver Darcy provide about the media's relationship with Donald Trump?
I read you for years and years and years at CNN. My best friend is Dana Bash. And I used to read your reporting and call her and say, oh, my God, did you read what Oliver Darcy is writing? And especially during the Chris Lick story. How did you sort of have the presence of mind to cover your own institution like that?
I felt like the moment demanded it, to be quite honest. And I think this moment demands accountability journalism inside the media. It's a huge power center. And like any other power center, if there's no one holding it to account, if there's no one shedding light on what's happening, bad things can happen and people make bad decisions often. And so I thought it was an important job.
And also, my name was on it. My face was on it. And I didn't sign up to be a journalist, to do public relations for, you know, billion-dollar corporations. And so, you know, if I wanted to do that, I would be in PR.
Chapter 3: How does corporate media capitulation affect the news landscape?
And so I felt like it was important to, you know, shine light and to hold everyone accountable, whether that was my corporate company, you know, CNN, the corporate company that, or owner of that, Warner Brothers Discovery, or others. And I also told, you know, my bosses there, I said, I'm not going to call another news organization or another media company
and hold them to a different standard than we're holding ourselves to. And so if we, you know, if CNN does something that generates controversy or is perceived as a bad decision, we need to cover that the same way we'd cover it anywhere else.
I mean, I think everyone listening is nodding if they're in our business, but I just think it is the unicorn that does it. And I will say, like, for my own part, I think the only time I covered Comcast was when Trump demolished the East Wing. And... they permitted us slash encouraged us to cover them as donors to Trump's East Wing project.
I guess the only other example is the hiring of Ronald McDaniel when we told our bosses, like, we have to cover this. It is really hard to do on a day-in and day-out basis. And I wonder...
If you can just talk a little bit more about how it's not that you, or I don't want to put words in your mouth, it's not that you relish negative coverage for your own company, but the alternative sends us down a really, really unappealing path as journalists.
It's very awkward to cover your own parent company. I guess that's what I'm trying to say. I mean, it's super awkward when you're, you know, writing coverage of your own boss, you know, the head of the company. It's awful, yeah. And you see them in the elevator and you're like, Oh, hey. Hi. Right?
Check your phone to see if you've been fired.
Right, exactly. It's just a very awkward scenario to be in. And I mean, I feel like when I was at CNN, I was like, this has got to be the only job in the world where I am paid to, you know, cover aggressively my own company. And it's a very strange place to be in, but I did feel like it was important. And you're right.
The alternative of being silent, I just personally, like, I can't go to bed at night knowing that I'm like,
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Chapter 4: What examples illustrate the toxic nature of today's media environment?
And I'm very thankful that I decided to leave the network and to launch Status because we're totally independent. And so I can now cover CNN and all these companies aggressively. There's no awkwardness. I'm not seeing anyone in the cafeteria. And it does just allow you, not that I was pulling punches while I was there. I think anyone who was reading the coverage would agree that wasn't the case.
But it just allows you that additional breathing room to tell it like it's really happening.
Okay, so tell me what is the biggest story right now that you're covering in our world, in the media world?
Broadly speaking, I think it's media executives, media companies, and tech companies bending the knee in a very overt way manner to Donald Trump and to power. And I think that's kind of the through line that we're seeing across industries, whether it's Hollywood, whether it's Silicon Valley, or whether it's the news media.
And there are a lot of examples, unfortunately, of this happening, whether it's at the Washington Post, whether it's at Paramount, whether it's at Meta or Apple or Google, it's happening across the board. And I think Unfortunately, it's the story that we have to cover.
And I think, again, being independent, not working for these companies, not getting a paycheck from these companies, not being supported by them allows us to say, wait a second, this is very abnormal behavior. This is really, frankly, embarrassing behavior for them and to call it out.
And I think that's actually what made us attractive to subscribers because they don't really get this coverage from other people because they're part of the problem. You know, their organizations are.
Well, and I also think if you look at where our industry is going, the relationship with the viewer slash listener is the whole ballgame. And I don't view my competition every day when we figure out what to do at four o'clock. Other TV outlets, I view it independent media.
We are competing for eyeballs with Substack, with people getting their information solely from podcasts because that's where the trust relationship is. Just tell me how you see sort of your competition.
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Chapter 5: What challenges do journalists face when covering their own companies?
censorship happening or, you know, and censorship is a bad word.
No, but they trust it. They trust it.
There's no self-censorship too. I think that's often what happens in news organizations as well. It's easier if we didn't call Trump an autocrat wannabe, right? It's easier if we just use softer language. It's easier if we didn't say Tucker Carlson's a right-wing extremist. Maybe we just call him a former Fox News host. This stuff happens quite a bit.
And I think audiences recognize it when it does happen. And they see us, you know, in particular, like, okay, well, these guys are actually saying what these people are like. Tucker Carlson's not a normal conservative. He's not just a former Fox News host. This is someone who's poisoning the public well, the public discourse with really extremist thoughts, right?
And he's pushing very radical conspiracy theories, whether it's about vaccines or about January 6th supposedly being a false flag operation, et cetera, et cetera. You know, you can go down the list. That's not normal. And we should not refer to him as just like a conservative host. They see us calling out.
Who's the conservative host now in the story? I guess it's Dana Perino, right? That's a conservative host. But the words don't... Because you're right. I mean, there's so many layers of what I think audiences recoil from. Some of it is just story selection. I always thought... when I worked in politics, that the power of Fox wasn't any individual anchor. It was the rundowns they created.
And I still think that story selection is the most power we have, what you decide to shine a light on, especially now in the second Trump term.
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Chapter 6: How does independent journalism differ from mainstream media coverage?
But the language is maybe the second most important thing, how we talk about them. And I wonder if you can just talk a little bit more on what you see and what you cover in terms of self-censorship.
I think you're right. What maddens me the most is that the people that actually wield power in today's politics are the people that are covered often the least. And what I mean by that is if you watch the evening news or you read the newspapers, very— Rarely do you read a piece about Sean Hannity or Tucker Carlson or, you know, Candace Owens or Megyn Kelly.
You know, they're almost non-existent, even though they're the ones that are guiding the Republican Party into these extremist corners.
We're not going to go kill Nicholas Maduro because we don't like the way he's treating his people. It's possible we're mad that he doesn't allow gay marriage. So to those of you who thought this whole project was globo homo. Not crazy, actually. Why did Charlie think he was a time traveler? He said, as I showed you in earlier messages, that he was a time traveler and he had to find me.
Political leaders, some in the legacy media mob, they are putting their supporters' lives at risk. They're endless, incendiary, dehumanizing rhetoric has resulted in more violence.
Fat, unattractive, gross people who were too chicken shit to actually sign up for the military and be true tough guys and gals have decided to find their courage through their rolls of lard on the streets of Minneapolis.
Instead, you read about random congressmen, you know, like when Marjorie Taylor Greene was first being covered, I was like, OK, like so some random congressperson said something. Yes, I obviously very radical and, you know, I should get some coverage. But like, are you listening to what's actually being said via these loud microphones?
And why is that? Why were we not trained? I mean, because I think that's how 2016 surprises everybody, right? My job in 2016 was for NBC, the network, kind of out there talking to voters. And there was a lot of interest in Trump that a lot of people missed. There was a lot of sort of hangover from his celebrity as The Apprentice that a lot of political journalists miss.
But how are we still missing it?
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Chapter 7: What role do conspiracy theories play in shaping public discourse?
And even after the Dominion documents came out, which really clearly show that top executives, top Fox News personalities knew that what they were peddling to their audience was a lie. Even still, people refer to them in the same bucket as CNN. I As if they're even in the same, like, industry. Line of business. Yeah, like, they're not. Like, CNN's newsgathering.
Whether you think about CNN, it's a newsgathering operation. They have correspondents around the world. They get news. They report it as they see fit. And instead, Fox was dishonestly, knowingly pushing Trump's BS to people. just in a way to make money. And even still, it's covered as if it's a news organization. I don't know why. I mean, I think there's a lot of reasons.
I think part of it's self-censorship. Part of it's just like laziness on behalf of news organizations that are covering Fox and others. Part of it is that there's not a appetite, I think, for aggressive coverage in this sector for whatever reason. Like, I think the news media to some extent has... sort of kind of come to terms with how to cover Donald Trump, right?
Like they call out his lies, they say they're lies, et cetera, but there hasn't been a reckoning in how we deal with the media environment that allowed Trump to be birthed into existence really in politics.
And I don't think until actually there is that reckoning and until executives that are allowing these lies to take hold across the country, I just feel like Trump might go away, but like the problem is still there, right? And it's actually getting worse and worse. If you look at the media environment we were in in 2015, it was a lot healthier than it is today. Today's extremely toxic.
And people like Candace Owens are just gaining more and more audience and more and more reach. And the organizations that were once willing to call them out are going away. You don't see a lot of hard-hitting media coverage these days.
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Chapter 8: How can the truth compete with propaganda in today's media?
You know, like there used to be these media teams, you know, I was part of one of them at CNN, but elsewhere at the Washington Post and Politico, and you can go down the list, but media reporters are kind of like an endangered species now. And it's just not an appetite to do this.
And I think it, I guess part of it's self-censorship, part of it's like the owners don't want to be at war with Fox News and Donald Trump's MAGA media army. And a lot of it's just that they've worked the refs very efficiently. Yeah.
With that stipulated, I'll throw in with not always knowing what to make of it. I mean, I would nod to their outsized power in our politics and also feeling disoriented in terms of how to cover their intramural fighting. But we are having this conversation at a moment of peak civil war within the MAGA media universe. And I wonder if you could just take me through, I mean, there's
There's Megyn Kelly calling out Fox, using words that I might have once used, calling them, quote, cheerleaders. Propagandists, I think she said, yeah. Propagandists for the military operation in Venezuela, while Megyn Kelly, with the other hand, is defending Tucker Carlson's you know, playing footsie with Nick Fuentes. So, and Candace Owens is sort of in a league of her own.
A lot of it seems to have at its sort of spilling over moment, the assassination of Charlie Kirk. His wife is now probably more famous than he ever was because she's crossed over into sort of mainstream fame. But just talk about the mega media universe right now.
Well, it's interesting. You know, if you listen to MAGA Media, Trump is the best president ever. We are winning so much around the world and at home. Like, everything is going swimmingly. And yet, the media infrastructure that supports Donald Trump is at this civil war, which makes no sense.
If everything's going so good— If everything's so awesome, why are you guys— They're the worst winners in the world, though. I have to say, this is one of the through lines from 16. Most people win and sort of, you know, normal politicians go about trying to enact their agenda and then trying to be gracious to the losers. They are the worst winners ever.
You know, it's very strange. But I do think, I think there's a lot of things going on. I think one is ego. So someone like Meghan, I think, just likes taking shots at Fox maybe a little bit.
And everybody. She texts everyone from Meghan Markle to Kara Swisher to Fox to Hannity. She seems to hate everybody.
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