Amid some predictable-yet-tiresome swipes at CBS News editor-in-chief Bari Weiss, Status founder and liberal media Stasi boss Oliver Darcy revealed in his newsletter Monday night that 60 Minutes correspondent Norah O’Donnell — who was co-host of CBS This Morning from September 2012 to May 2019 — has the inside track on returning to the show (now called CBS Mornings) as the third co-host.
An O’Donnell hire would fill the show’s long-standing void, which has been around since Tony Dokoupil left on December 17, 2025 to take over the CBS Evening News.
Darcy started by remarking O’Donnell had left the morning show under the chyron “Norah’s Next Chapter” for Evening News (and ignoring how it was done at Jeff Glor’s expense, statistically the least anti-Trump anchor), which she held for six years until her last show on January 23, 2025.
He added that, unlike most inside the building (or at least the leakers to Darcy), O’Donnell “has worked to ingratiate herself with Weiss,” and was thus rewarded with a correspondent title at 60 Minutes.
“But her biggest role under Weiss might still be yet to come. I’m told that O’Donnell is being strongly considered for a return to the CBS News morning show. O’Donnell has recently been filling in on ‘CBS Mornings’ and was featured in a recent promo for the show, which garnered attention internally,” he explained, pointing out CBS “did not provide a comment for this story.”
Darcy made clear, though, that other options remain even though “O’Donnell is likely the most logical choice of the bunch” because “[s]he is a reliable hand with strong range and significant anchoring experience” whom Weiss likes:
In any event, CBS News brass has not made any decisions. And I’m told there are a handful of others under serious consideration for the prized morning show role. They include former “GMA3” host Eva Pilgrim, who currently anchors “Inside Edition”; former “Fox & Friends” and “The View” host Elisabeth Hasselbeck; and CBS News anchor and correspondent Kelly O’Grady.
Conceding “a new host could inject some much-needed new energy into the show,” Darcy blamed the show’s third-place ratings — which he conveniently omitted has been the case for seemingly a generation — on Weiss for having “badly damaged CBS News’ reputation with the public, while [David] Ellison allowed the cancellation of Stephen Colbert’s top-rated late-night program—meaning some viewers who might have otherwise left their televisions tuned to CBS overnight are no longer doing so, likely putting further pressure on the morning ratings.”
