President Donald Trump will sit for an interview Tuesday with the new MAGA-coded CBS Evening News anchor.
The reward comes in week two of Tony Dokoupil’s tenure in the anchor chair at CBS, whose news division has been overhauled by editor-in-chief Bari Weiss to appeal to a broader audience, like Trump supporters disillusioned with the mainstream media.
Tuesday will be Trump’s first interview with CBS since his 60 Minutes interview in November. The program begins at 6:30 p.m. EST.
Trump, 79, is expected to conduct a “short pull aside” after touring a Ford factory in Detroit, according to a pool report of White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt’s morning remarks.
Photos and a short clip released by CBS showed the two men chummy with each other inside the factory.
The network announced that the interview touched on Iran, the economy, and departing Fed Chair Jerome Powell, who has accused the administration of threatening a criminal indictment to pressure him into cutting interest rates.
Dokoupil, 45, has already conducted an “unchallenging interview” with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth in his new role and also sat down with the administration’s so-called border czar, Tom Homan.
The Connecticut-born, Miami-raised anchor has been traveling to major cities across the country as part of a publicity tour to bring more eyeballs to the evening news. Monday’s live show was broadcast from Denver, Colorado.
Dokoupil has desperately tried to portray himself as an everyday man and a mainstream media outsider—despite attending private school as a child, holding an Ivy League degree, and living with his wife, MS Now correspondent Katy Tur, in one of Brooklyn’s most expensive enclaves.
The anchor, who was most recently a CBS correspondent and, at one point, a Daily Beast writer, told viewers ahead of his debut that the mainstream media has repeatedly “missed the story.”
Dokoupil added that he relates to Americans in the heartland who feel legacy media has failed to “reflect” their lived experiences.
Right-wing figures like Megyn Kelly and former Trump Press Secretary Sean Spicer scoffed at Dokoupil’s new persona. Spicer said Dokoupil was “part of the problem” in previous years and is now trying to hail himself as a savior for the mainstream media.
“You gotta go back to what he said, ‘I was you.’ No, dude, you were the problem,” Spicer said on his podcast, The Huddle, last week. “This isn’t some—you know, guy that was there was shouting from the rooftop. Tony is the problem, and for him to gaslight us and act like he was somehow that understands and identifies with is total B.S.”
Kelly spoke similarly on her own show.
“Where was he standing up for people who were in the independent lane trying to tell the truth about media, about government, about the Biden administration?” she said, continuing, “I don’t remember you, Tony, so I find this utter bulls--t condescension, and I do believe it will f--king fail, as all these networks are failing because the audience has caught on to their bulls--t.”
