Anti-woke CBS editor-in-chief Bari Weiss has shocked staffers with her unbridled joy at meeting Donald Trump.
“He was so happy to see her and she was so excited to meet him, they both leaned in and exchanged kisses on the cheek,” a source told The Independent of the meet-cute.
Weiss, 41, first met the president after his 60 Minutes interview in November, during which he said he “didn’t know” the CBS head but had only heard good things.
By kismet, Weiss appeared on set moments after the interview ended, and host Norah O’Donnell’s “jaw dropped” at the very familiar greeting.
One CBS News reporter told the outlet: “I’m still kind of stunned by this. It reeks of elitism.”
The reporter added: “It’s wildly inappropriate and presents an overly chummy relationship with the president that no real journalist should or would engage in because it suggests a lack of objectivity. That is the president, not a grieving family member.”
While the reporter said that the greeting was “not a normal news practice” and a handshake would have sufficed, another insider suggested that kisses were the norm in the workplace.
“It wasn’t just Bari that he greeted that way. It was everyone,” they said, describing the close-quarters interaction as “standard fare.”
The Daily Beast has contacted CBS News and the White House for comment. The latter directed the Beast to an X post by communications director Stephen Cheung, in which he shared a photo of Trump interacting with other CBS staffers.
Weiss’ CBS News takeover has been marked by a distinctly more MAGA-coded, Trump-amenable tone. The Free Press founder, who had no prior experience in broadcast journalism before landing the top job, has made the executive decision to sit in on screenings of potentially “sensitive” 60 Minutes segments.
Soon after pulling a story on the deportation of Venezuelan men to CECOT in El Salvador—the largest prison in Latin America—just hours before it was due to air in December, Weiss found another segment she wanted to veto.
Anderson Cooper was leading the report on the Trump administration’s refusal to process South African refugees, with it being assumed that Trump wouldn’t be happy with the investigation.
Adding to her Trump-tailored revamp, Weiss has both torn the network and seen ratings plummet with her placement of Tony Dokoupil as the new CBS Evening News host. With one insider describing his debut as “a total s--t show,” the former Daily Beast reporter also bemused followers with a folksy introduction video in which he rallied against the “legacy media” and “elites.”
Trump nemesis Stephen Colbert—who has featured in several Truth Social rants from the president—is due to leave CBS in May, and seems to be using his final months to rail against the network. This week, the host mocked Dokoupil’s interview of Trump, after closing out 2025 with the ominous message: “Don’t trust billionaires.”
