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The Dokoupil Dud

Despite wall-to-wall promotion, a splashy cross-country tour, and interviews with top Trump officials, Tony Dokoupil’s "CBS Evening News" debut has delivered a ratings dud—and perhaps exposed the limits of Bari Weiss' MAGA-ification of the network.

Oliver Darcy
Oliver Darcy

Jan 14, 2026

The Dokoupil Dud

Despite wall-to-wall promotion, a splashy cross-country tour, and interviews with top Trump officials, Tony Dokoupil’s "CBS Evening News" debut has delivered a ratings dud—and perhaps exposed the limits of Bari Weiss' MAGA-ification of the network.

Oliver Darcy
Oliver Darcy

Jan 14, 2026

Tony Dokoupil interviews Donald Trump. (Screen grab via CBS News)

On Tuesday night, the “CBS Evening News” aired a 12-minute interview anchor Tony Dokoupil conducted with Donald Trump at a Ford assembly line—a trip the president ostensibly made to Detroit to promote an economic message, though his remarks during a speech wildly veered into several other topics, including false claims about the 2020 election being “rigged.”

In any case, Dokoupil, who complained before taking his new anchoring gig that “the most urgent questions simply weren’t being asked” by the press, landed a rare interview with Trump at a perilous moment in American politics. It was a clear opportunity for the newly minted anchor—who has also told viewers not to trust him, but to make him “earn it”—to demonstrate that he is not a shill for the new MAGA-friendly owner of CBS News, David Ellison, or his new MAGA-friendly boss, Bari Weiss.

But instead of holding Trump accountable in a meaningful way or really pressing for real answers to urgent questions, the interview resembled something more akin to a…

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Oliver Darcy

Jon Passantino

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