CBS Evening News anchor Tony Dokoupil’s bumbling attempts to cover Donald Trump’s state visit to China have been dealt another humiliating blow.
The struggling host at the now-Trump-friendly network already hit a snag this week after he failed to secure a broadcast visa to cover the president’s talks in Beijing, meaning he had to report on the summit from a hotel more than 1,000 miles away in the Taiwanese capital Taipei.
If that wasn’t bad enough, Status reports that Dokoupil suffered another setback when he was barred from broadcasting from his hotel following complaints from its owners about how he covered the thorny issue of China and Taiwan on his show.
A source told Status that the hotel management “was appalled” by the aggressive manner in which Dokoupil discussed the democratically governed island, which Beijing claims as its own, as Trump was meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping.
After getting booted out of his hotel room-turned-broadcasting studio, Dokoupil presented Thursday night’s show from Taipei’s Liberty Square. Dokoupil even referenced his latest humiliation while discussing the hot-button issue of China threatening to invade Taiwan during Thursday’s show.
“The threat of China is felt all over this island. One woman slapped her husband’s arm when he started talking to us about independence. Another woman asked that her words not be used, telling us ‘We cannot speak freely,’” Dokoupil said.
“And even at our hotel where, after seeing our broadcast last night, the manager told us we can’t cover anything political on their property.”
The lack of planning to get Dokoupil’s visa to cover Trump’s trip to China was indicative of how much CBS News is struggling under its MAGA-curious boss, Bari Weiss.
Weiss, who had no experience in television news production before she was parachuted into the editor-in-chief role by Paramount Skydance CEO David Ellison, has had a controversy-filled tenure at CBS News.
This includes pulling an “Inside CECOT” segment about the notorious El Salvador prison that was highly critical of Trump’s hardline deportation policy, and letting go of CBS News’ international chief Claire Day over disagreements about her coverage of Israel.
Weiss’ promotion of Dokoupil to the coveted evening news slot has also been a disaster for the network.
Dokoupil’s show regularly falls below 4 million viewers—a threshold that would previously have been considered disastrous—with his May 8 broadcast recording a record-low average of just 3.4 million viewers.
One television news executive told Status that the failings at CBS News can largely be blamed on Weiss’ leadership and the pro-MAGA editorial shift.
“It’s easy to sit at home and criticize TV journalism and say how it needs to be done differently or better. But it takes real, serious people and skill to execute this stuff,” they said.
“Bari and the Ellisons demonstrate yet again that this is much harder than it looks. I hope for their business and their talent they start to understand just how badly they’ve miscalculated their approach to news.”
