While most on CNN and the broadcast networks kept it civil and even eloquent at times in covering the murder of Charlie Kirk, former senior CNN media reporter Oliver Darcy chose to go the opposite direction on Wednesday night at his site Status, raging at conservative media for “particularly alarming” rhetoric “ratchet[ing] up the language” and sending America down “a darker path” unlike “cooler heads” in “mainstream media and progressive voices.”
Darcy had the gall to trumpet “many prominent voices in mainstream and progressive media” showing up on scene in this tragedy as “leaders who lower the temperature, not raise it.” His example? Mehdi Hassan, who insisted he was against Kirk’s murder even though “Kirk called me a ‘lunatic’ and a ‘prostitute’ and demanded I be deported.”
“It was a model of how to respond: empathetic and clear about the bright red line that must never be crossed. Fortunately, it’s how the vast majority of mainstream media personalities and progressive figures reacted,” he added.
Then came the pivot: “The reaction on the right, however, has been markedly different.”
Darcy cited Jesse Watters, Laura Loomer, Elon Musk, Clay Travis, and the despicable Andrew Tate as examples of dangerously “influential voices in MAGA Media” who “have chosen instead to ratchet up the language” (click “expand”):
Fox News host Jesse Watters declared on air, “They are at war with us! Whether we want to accept it or not, they are at war with us! And what are we gonna do about it?” Laura Loomer, who has Trump’s ear, posted on X, “It’s time for the Trump administration to shut down, defund, & prosecute every single Leftist organization… We must shut these lunatic leftists down. Once and for all. The Left is a national security threat.” Elon Musk declared, “The Left is the party of murder.” Andrew Tate described the state of affairs as a “civil war.” That type of rhetoric has been particularly alarming, especially given that it comes from people with large audiences and significant political power. At a moment when the country desperately needs cooler heads, some of the most influential voices in MAGA Media have chosen instead to ratchet up the language.
“I am so angry—and I understand everybody out there says, ‘Well, we have to tamp down the anger,’” Clay Travis acknowledged on Sean Hannity’s Fox News program. “I’m not willing to do that right now. Because I get angrier the more I think about this, Sean. They put the wheels of motion for this in order. They did it, Sean.”
Darcy has clearly thought about what he wanted to say before putting it down, but it still isn’t any less toxic and the kind of language our media elites and general, polite society shouldn’t accept.
He continued to hurl venom at conservatives for grieving their lost friend in Kirk by using his body as “fodder for partisan gain” and “poison that eats away at democracy,” sending America “down a darker path”:
Political violence cannot be excused, or rationalized, or turned into fodder for partisan gain. It is a poison that eats away at democracy. Everyone—politicians and media figures alike—has a responsibility to lower the temperature. Ratcheting it up will send the country down a darker path. Unfortunately, that seems to be the direction some are pushing toward in this fragile moment, as the nation convulses following yet another heinous act of violence.
Darcy sneered at Kirk from the get-go, tagging him as a “right-wing activist and MAGA Media personality” and had “long embraced fierce debate on culture war issues, often taking contrarian and outlandish far-right positions, while relishing the verbal combat[.]”
Only then did he concede that “his killing was nothing less than a horrific and intolerable act of violence” and “no matter how deep the disagreements, violence is never the answer.” But the niceties ended there.
Linking his assassination to other politically-motived attacks in the last few years from Paul Pelosi to President Trump in Butler to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention headquarters, Darcy declared “[m]uch remains unknown about what led to Wednesday’s shooting.”
Before launching into his attack on the right Darcy found a cause in “online algorithms feed[ing] people a steady diet of outrage and extremism” creating a nation “increasingly polarized and political violence is breaking out into the open.”
Below his poisonous rant, Darcy went into a list of links about reactions from across the spectrum, but included one more missive of hate:
Sean Hannity vilified the mainstream press, playing out of context clips during his program to suggest journalists were politicizing the shooting. He openly mulled doing “an entire hour of rage and hatred” he said was coming from the media and political left.
The others were largely from or defending the left, including giving air support to Jezebel for a past post rooting for witches to curse Kirk, touting Matthew Dowd’s defense of his initial comments about Kirk (which got him fired from MSNBC), and boosting The New York Times editorial board.
