CBS Evening News anchor Tony Dokoupil is looking to make a splash a couple of weeks into his new job.
Dokoupil, who is set to anchor the evening newscast from Detroit, Michigan tonight, is slated to interview President Donald Trump, according to a White House pool report. A spokesperson for CBS News did not respond to a request for comment as of writing.
The anchor has had a whirlwind start to his tenure at the program, starting a couple of days earlier after the U.S. launched a shock campaign in Venezuela, abducting that country’s president Nicolas Maduro.
He was only named anchor a month ago, in what was the first major programming move of CBS News editor-in-chief Bari Weiss. His launch was a rocky one, with an unfortunate Teleprompter flub (it was fixed for the west coast version of the broadcast). The ratings for the first week didn’t move the needle on the ratings, improving slightly from the past few weeks, but the show was still far behind ABC and NBC.
The show also featured a number of curious editorial decisions, garnering outrage or praise (depending on who you ask) in segments about Marco Rubio’s many jobs (Dokoupil proclaimed him “the ultimate Florida man”), and a commentary about the aftermath of the ICE shooting of Renee Good in Minneapolis.
The Trump interview is sure to generate similarly intense interest.