Former Fox & Friends anchor and The View personality Elisabeth Hasselbeck is testing out a new role under the MAGA-coded CBS News boss Bari Weiss’s media umbrella.
The MAGA television personality and former reality star, 49, will take on a guest host spot on CBS Mornings this week, the program announced on social media.
Her guest tenure is expected to last from Monday through Wednesday during the 8 a.m. block and is part of a series of tryouts aimed at revitalizing a program whose ratings have sunk considerably compared with its competitors.
The former Survivor contestant will not appear during political or hard news segments, a CBS News spokesperson told the Daily Beast. Rather, she will appear during cultural and entertainment spots such as the program’s “Talk of the Table” segment.
The former Fox News personality and proud Trump voter is auditioning for the morning program’s co-hosting vacancy left by Tony Dokoupil, who was appointed as the anchor of CBS Evening News by Weiss after her installation as the network’s editor-in-chief last year.
Hasselbeck will co-host alongside its full-time anchors, Gayle King and Nate Burleson, as well as Vladimir Duthiers and Adriana Diaz.
Inside Edition‘s Eva Pilgrim served as a guest host on Mornings this week, and a network spokesperson said there will be more guest hosts throughout the summer.
In 2013, Hasselbeck was fired by the show’s producers after nearly a decade of co-hosting The View. Reports at the time indicated that the show’s audience considered Hasselbeck to be too conservative.
Hasselbeck, married to former NFL quarterback Tim Hasselbeck, then joined Fox & Friends.
She was welcomed back to The View as a guest host in March, where she sparred with her former Fox News colleague Megyn Kelly over the Trump administration’s attacks on Iran.
“How dare you, Megyn Kelly?” Hasselbeck said in response to Kelly’s comments about American service members dying “for a foreign country” such as “Iran or for Israel.”
“How dare you tell a military person who has sacrificed their lives for our nation, in our uniform, when they are sacrificing their lives in our uniform—how dare you tell them or their families or our nation what they died for?" she said. “I may vote Republican, and I’m a conservative, but I’m a thinking woman, and I have a heart, with this war—or military attack."
Weiss’s tenure as head of CBS News has been plagued by controversy, including dwindling ratings and on-air mishaps of Dokoupil’s Evenings, the firings of prominent 60 Minutes journalists such as Scott Pelley, and accusations that she has meddled in her correspondents’ reporting.
“Everything she’s touched has turned to s--t. Everything she’s touched has gone colossally wrong. And I don’t think she’s shown any talent for this position,” retired 60 Minutes correspondent Steve Kroft told Variety. “She’s only fulfilling other people’s agendas.”
“I have a feeling that Bari will not be overseeing 60 Minutes for very much longer," he added.
