Tony Dokoupil had a rocky first day leading the revamped CBS Evening News, which he kicked off by introducing himself twice within 80 seconds (three times if you count the announcer’s introduction of the new anchor).
Dokoupil, who criticized legendary CBS News anchor Walter Cronkite over the weekend, covered Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz’s decision not to seek re-election and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s censure of Arizona Sen. Mark Kelly on Monday’s broadcast. But there were some confusing moments during his presentation that were difficult to ignore.
Dokoupil, 45, first segued from one topic to another that he said would be about Walz—only to cut himself off after a photograph of Kelly showed on screen.
“To other news, as you just heard from Jill—oh, to other news now. Ah, to Governor Walz—no. We’re going to do Mark Kelly. First day—first day, big problems here,“ he acknowledged, shaking his head and grinning.
That wasn’t the end of them.
”Are we going to Kelly here or are we going to go to Jonah Kaplan?" Dokoupil then asked the control room, referring to the correspondent on the Walz story. An awkward silence followed as photographs of Kelly continued to show on screen.
“We’re doing Mark Kelly, possibly demoted from his retired rank of captain in the Navy,” Dokoupil finally began before getting into the story without incident.
But when it was time to address Walz’s announcement, Dokoupil ran into another problem when he referred to the Democratic governor’s state.
“Now we go to Minnesota. A surprise announcement from the Great Lake State there today: Tim Walz, the 2024 Democratic vice presidential nominee, ended his run for reelection as governor of Minnesota, quite likely ending his political career as well,” Dokoupil said.
However, the Great Lakes State (plural) is one of Michigan’s nicknames. Minnesota is known as the “Land of 10,000 Lakes.”
CBS News has been contacted for comment.
Dokoupil was named to the anchor’s chair last month by CBS News Editor-in-Chief Bari Weiss, who was reportedly in the studio for Dokoupil’s gaffe-filled debut.
The MAGA-curious Weiss, who is aiming to make the network more acceptable to conservatives, was criticized for the staffing decision, with some CBS staffers calling Dokoupil’s appointment an “insult” to the long-running news program. She was also the one who made the call to kill a 60 Minutes segment on El Salvador’s notorious CECOT megaprison, just three hours before it was set to air.
Dokoupil, who previously co-hosted CBS’s morning news show, previewed the new CBS Evening News with a video on social media that railed against “elites” and the “legacy media,” which he accused of mishandling stories about Hunter Biden’s laptop, Hillary Clinton’s emails, and “the president’s fitness for office.” (It wasn’t clear which president he was referring to.)
“On too many stories, the press has missed the story,” he said. “Because we’ve taken into account the perspective of advocates and not the average American. Or we put too much weight in the analysis of academics or elites, and not enough on you.”
The former Daily Beast reporter was educated at $53,000-a-year Gulliver Preparatory School in Miami, whose alumni include Julio Iglesias’ and Jeb Bush’s children; George Washington University in Washington, D.C.; and Columbia University in Manhattan.
He and his wife Katy Tur live in one of Brooklyn’s most expensive enclaves.
Similarly, Weiss’ “populist” credentials include her private education in Pittsburgh, Ivy League education at Columbia University, and writing opinion pieces for The Wall Street Journal and New York Times.
She was installed last year as the editor-in-chief of CBS News when the network’s new owner—billionaire nepo-baby David Ellison, son of Trump-aligned Oracle founder Larry Ellison—bought her anti-woke website The Free Press.
Originally, Weiss planned to launch the newly reimagined CBS Evening News by accompanying Dokoupil on a 10-day tour of U.S. cities. Together they would fly from city to city on a private jet to show Dokoupil was in touch with “average Americans.”
Those plans were delayed, though, when President Donald Trump launched a surprise attack on Venezuela on Saturday.
In the meantime, Dokoupil has responded to criticism about CBS’s new editorial stance—which includes a declaration that the U.S. is the “last best hope on Earth”—with the dubious claim that he will be “more accountable and more transparent than Cronkite.”
