I mostly agree with you, I just want to offer that a great critical interview is possible, and it meaningfully differs from an adversarial interview. (Sam Harris has some great critical interviews that are not adversarial, for example.) Further, adversarial interviews can be good, too. It's just that so many of them are lazy, terrible, and sanctimonious nowadays.
And interviewers talking down to the audience is especially annoying if you get the impression that they miss the larger picture, or even worse, you know more about the topic.
I think he is popular because standard news media interviews have become that bad.