As Tony Dokoupil hopes to right the ship at CBS Evening News after a glitch-filled debut, the network scored a coup in securing an exclusive Trump interview during the President’s visit to a Ford F-150 pickup truck factory in Dearborn, Michigan on Tuesday.
While Dokoupil cycled through a series of rapid-fire questions for Trump — whether Iran has crossed a red-line as it cracks down on protestors (unclear), what the President thinks of the ICE shooting in Minneapolis (he said the video could be viewed two ways), how his DOJ is threatening Fed chair Jerome Powell (“some” people are praising the move, he says) — the most telling media moment may be the most meta one for the CBS anchor.
During the exchange, Trump suggested that Dokoupil “wouldn’t have a job” if he hadn’t won the election and wasn’t in the White House. The moment was striking given how the President’s administration has been seen as cozy with CBS News’ new ownership team led by David Ellison (and back stopped financially by his father, Oracle founder Larry Ellison, who has made multiple White House visits this year).
“You wouldn’t have this job, certainly, whatever the hell they’re paying you. Our country is rocketing right now. If they got in, we would be Venezuela on steroids,” Trump pointedly told the CBS News anchor, seemingly referring to his election opponent Kamala Harris.
Dokoupil was elevated to the Evening News role in early December in a shake-up that saw the exits of former co-anchors Maurice DuBois and John Dickerson. He had most recently been an anchor at CBS Mornings and joined the network in 2016 as a correspondent.
The insinuation, that Trump was operating far above the pay grade of Dokoupil at CBS News, likely wasn’t the optics that the leadership team of EIC Bari Weiss and president Tom Cibrowski were hoping for out of nabbing an interview with the President. Though CBS Evening News did get to add another name to a list of Trump administration interviews this month, including border czar Tom Homan, Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Homeland Security chief Kristi Noem and more.
The overhaul optics during Weiss’ tenure running CBS News have been magnified since the news chief shelved a 60 Minutes segment in December on a notorious prison in El Salvador that the Trump administration had been deporting Venezuelans to from the U.S. (“It was not ready,” Weiss told staff at the time.)
And it became fodder for emcee Nikki Glaser’s Golden Globes jokes on Sunday (“see BS News,” a quip that aired on the CBS broadcast), while each perceived misstep or technical issue during the first few telecasts have made headlines.
Ellison had installed Weiss to run the network news division after closing an $8 billion deal to merge his Skydance Media with Paramount in August and subsequently acquiring her libertarian-leaning newsletter platform The Free Press. The new ownership’s exec team has described the overhaul of CBS News as being aimed at targeting the “70 percent” of the country that doesn’t define itself as either far left or far right politically.
Right now, at least going by linear ratings, its flagship evening show has an uphill battle. From Jan. 5-9, CBS Evening News has averaged 4.17 million viewers, down from the same week last year, and below ABC World News Tonight (8.08 million viewers) and NBC Nightly News (6.37 viewers) for the comparable frame.
The CBS anchor let the “job” mention slide until the very end of the interview, where he pushed back and told Trump he didn’t believe that he wouldn’t have had a job if Trump had lost the election. “I do think I’d have this job even if the other guys won,” Dokoupil said.
Trump shot back, “Yeah, but at a lesser salary.”