Former CNN Reporter Oliver Darcy Melted Down Over One CBS Report on a Democrat

CBS News exposed Michigan Senate hopeful Abdul El-Sayed's deleted 9/11 posts this week.

A former CNN media reporter turned that story into a meltdown about race.

What Oliver Darcy accused CBS journalists of doing will leave you stunned.

Darcy Turns a CBS Fact Check Into a Race Story

Oliver Darcy did not dispute a single fact in the CBS News report.

He couldn't.

CBS found real posts, written by a real Senate candidate, deleted for a real reason.

Instead Darcy went after the reporters.

He wrote that El-Sayed's deleted posts were "likely innocuous" and insisted the candidate never praised the 9/11 hijackers or pushed conspiracy theories.

Nobody at CBS said he did.

Darcy's actual argument was that CBS never would have run this story if El-Sayed weren't Muslim.

That's not media criticism.

That's a shield thrown up in front of a Democrat the moment his words became a problem.

El-Sayed's Deleted Words Are the Real Story Here

Here's what CBS actually reported.

In 2020, El-Sayed compared COVID deaths to 9/11 and said he hoped America would spend the next decade "fighting a war for public health" instead of launching military operations.

In 2021, on the 20th anniversary of the attacks, he wrote that he mourned "the 3K lives, 6K injuries, & infrastructural devastation in NYC," then added that tomorrow he'd mourn "~1M lives" lost in wars he blamed on his country.

He deleted both posts.

El-Sayed also spent years associating with Twitch streamer Hasan Piker, a self-described socialist who once said America "deserved 9/11."

When a reporter finally asked him about it on the campaign trail, El-Sayed called 9/11 "a terrible attack" and pivoted straight to criticizing the wars that followed.

That's the story Darcy wants you distracted from.

CBS Staffers and Daily Beast Pile On

Darcy wasn't alone.

One CBS staffer told the Daily Beast the network had taken "a small nugget of news" and "forced it into something much larger."

A former senior CBS staffer went further, calling the story "shameful" and declaring "the racism is overt."

MSNBC's Mehdi Hasan asked CBS point-blank whether it was "super offensive and disgusting and Islamophobic" to open a story on a potential first Muslim senator with 9/11.

Michigan congresswoman Yassamin Ansari called the CBS headline "blatantly racist."

Not one of them explained why a Democrat's deleted comments about mourning terrorists' collateral damage on America's worst day don't deserve a headline.

The Double Standard Nobody in That Newsroom Will Name

CNN never had this problem when it dug up deleted tweets from Trump aide Natalie Harp.

Darcy's own former network ran that story straight, no soul-searching required, no accusations of bigotry against the reporters who found it.

Ilhan Omar caught similar treatment back in 2019, when her "some people did something" line about 9/11 sparked outrage that much of the same press corps spent weeks trying to explain away instead of report.

The pattern is not subtle.

When a Republican's old posts surface, it's accountability journalism.

When a Democrat's old posts surface, suddenly the reporters are the racists.

Darcy built a CNN career finger-wagging at conservatives over disinformation, and now he's the one carrying water for a Senate candidate's words.

Bari Weiss was brought to CBS to stop that exact kind of newsroom cowardice, and the fact that her staff is melting down over one accurate headline tells you she found the rot fast.

Michigan voters deserve to know what their possible next senator really believes about 9/11, not what Oliver Darcy has decided is too uncomfortable for CBS to print.

Sources:

• Jorge Bonilla, "Hysterical: Oliver Darcy Melts Down Over CBS Story on El-Sayed's Deleted 9/11 Tweets," NewsBusters, August 31, 2026.
• Fox News Staff, "CBS News Takes Heat Over Report on Dem Hopeful Abdul El-Sayed's Now-Deleted 9/11 Posts," Fox News, September 1, 2026.
• Daily Wire Staff, "Abdul El-Sayed Has A Deleted 9/11 Tweets Problem," Daily Wire, August 31, 2026.
• CBS News Staff, "Michigan Democrat Abdul El-Sayed's Deleted Tweets on Sept. 11 Attacks," CBS News, August 31, 2026.
• Daily Beast Staff, "MAGA-Curious CBS Boss Bari Weiss Hit With Furious Staff Backlash Over Abdul El-Sayed Story," Daily Beast, September 1, 2026.