Trump Suggests Tony Dokoupil “Wouldn’t Have a Job” If He Wasn’t in White House
Tony Dokoupil hoping to right the ship CBS Evening News After a troubled start, the network scored a coup in securing an exclusive Trump interview during the President’s visit to the Ford F-150 pickup truck plant in Dearborn, Michigan, on Tuesday.
As Dokoupil answers a rapid-fire series of questions for Trump — whether Iran crossed the red line in attacking protesters (unclear), what the President thought about the ICE attack in Minneapolis (he said the video could be viewed two ways), how the Justice Department threatened Fed chair Jerome Powell (“some” people are praising the move, he says) — the most telling moment in the media might be the most meta for the CBS anchor.
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During the call, Trump suggested that Dokoupil “couldn’t have a job” if he hadn’t won the election and wasn’t in the White House. The moment was striking, given how cozy the president’s administration is seen with CBS News’ new ownership team led by David Ellison (and being held back financially by his father, Oracle founder Larry Ellison, who has made multiple White House visits this year).
“You’re definitely not going to get this job, no matter how much money they pay you. Our country is booming right now. If they come in, we’ll be Venezuela on steroids,” Trump told the CBS News anchor, clearly referring to his election rival Kamala Harris.
Dokoupil promoted to rank Evening News At the beginning of December, he took part in a reshuffle that saw the exits of former co-hosts Maurice DuBois and John Dickerson. He was most recently a presenter at: CBS Mornings and joined the network as a reporter in 2016.
Trump’s insinuation that Dokoupil was working well above his pay grade on CBS News was probably not the optic that EIC Bari Weiss and chairman Tom Cibrowski’s leadership team were hoping for from an interview with the President. Again CBS Evening News Another name was added to the list of meetings with the Trump administration this month, including border czar Tom Homan, Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Homeland Security chief Kristi Noem and more.
Overhaul efforts have accelerated during Weiss’ tenure at CBS News since the news chief shelved a project. 60 Minutes In December, an episode about a notorious prison in El Salvador from which the Trump administration deported Venezuelans from the United States (“It wasn’t ready,” Weiss told staff at the time).
And it became fodder for host Nikki Glaser’s Golden Globes jokes on Sunday (“Look at BS News,” a quip that aired on the CBS broadcast), with every perceived misstep or technical issue making headlines in the first few telecasts.
Ellison tapped Weiss to run the network news division in August after signing an $8 billion deal to merge Skydance Media with Paramount and then acquiring the libertarian-leaning newsletter platform. Free Press. The new owner’s management team announced that the overhaul of CBS News is intended to target the “70 percent” of the country who identify politically as neither the far left nor the far right.
It’s currently an uphill battle for the flagship evening show, at least according to linear ratings. Between 5-9 January CBS Evening News It reached an average of 4.17 million viewers compared to the same week last year. 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” remark slide until the end of the interview, when he backtracked and told Trump he didn’t believe he wouldn’t have a job if Trump had lost the election. “I think I will get this job even if the others win,” Dokoupil said.
Trump responded, “Yes, but with less pay.”
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