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MAGA-Curious CBS Gives Vance Primetime Show in Battleground State

Vance will participate in a town hall hosted by CBS News next week.

Vice President JD Vance will participate in a town hall hosted by CBS News next week, as he takes questions from Michigan voters ahead of the 2026 midterm elections.

The town hall will be hosted by CBS Evening News anchor Tony Dokoupil. It will be recorded next week, but will not air until Saturday, Oct. 17.

The event only adds to the flurry of campaign events both he and President Donald Trump are embarking on ahead of the midterms, which are expected to be a disaster for Republicans at the ballot box come Election Day.

The vice president will take questions from voters on both sides of the aisle on an array of topics, including “affordability, tariffs, immigration, healthcare, artificial intelligence, the war with Iran and the state of our democracy,” a press release from CBS stated.

“As Americans head to the polls, CBS News presents the town hall with Vice President Vance in front of an audience of Michigan voters from across the political spectrum,” the press release said.

Controversy has swirled around CBS News since Bari Weiss, who had no professional experience in TV news before assuming her new role, took over the network as editor-in-chief late last year after her “anti-woke” news and opinion blog, The Free Press, was purchased by Paramount Skydance for $150 million, of which David Ellison, a son of billionaire Trump donor Larry Ellison, is the CEO.

She and Ellison, 43, have attempted to make the network more Trump-friendly, but buyouts, layoffs, and criticism have marked the network’s rightward lurch.

She also tapped Dokoupil, 45, to revamp the network’s signature evening news programming. But ratings have been consistently down throughout his time leading the program, as ABC World News Tonight and NBC Nightly News have been neck and neck with each other in the ratings for the top evening news program.

Vance’s big night with Dokoupil on the network comes just weeks ahead of the midterm elections, in which Republicans are expected to lose control of the House and potentially the Senate.

Trump, whose approval rating has sunk to one of the lowest of any president, has urged Republican voters to simply vote like he is on the ballot. He has been blitzing around the country, including to reliably red places like Oklahoma and Texas, to try and muster up support for his MAGA candidates ahead of Nov. 4.

Vance meanwhile has sort of acknowledged that some voters feel disillusioned by the Trump administration’s policies, as he’s begged voters to just give them another chance at running the federal government.

He said last month that his message to voters would be: “Give us another chance or give us another couple of years to continue to work on the amazing things that we’ve been doing for the past two years.”

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Annabella RosciglioneReporter

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