Bari the ratings
By 
As always, the closest Donald Trump comes to having a redeeming value is his inevitable humiliation of his most abject lickspittles:
CBS News, striving to satisfy Bari Weiss’ pledge to “drive the news,” turns to live primetime humiliation porn
[image or embed]— Fucking Bitch Hat (@kenwhite.bsky.social) Jan 13, 2026 at 5:41 PM
Trump couldn’t resist pointing out that Dokoupil is a sub-mediocre MAGA affirmative action hire even in the midst of an interview that was pure state media:
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 chummy exchange in which Trump was fully in control, allowed to ramble, deflect, and spout nonsense with little resistance.
On Iran, Dokoupil asked Trump about his “endgame,” only for the president to sidestep the question and declare that his “endgame is to win.” When Dokoupil raised the issue of rising grocery prices, he allowed Trump to dodge again and boast that “our growth numbers are through the roof.” When the anchor brought up the criminal probe Trump’s Department of Justice has launched into Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell, Dokoupil permitted Trump to rant that Powell has “been a lousy Fed chairman.” And when asked about ICE fatally shooting Renee Good, Trump was allowed—without challenge—to claim there are “hundreds of thousands of murderers” illegally in the United States. Most embarrassing of all, Trump, who indirectly praised the Ellisons, repeatedly told Dokoupil to his face that he “wouldn’t have a job right now” had Kamala Harris won the 2024 election.
All told, it was an interview that would have felt far more at home on Fox News than on the network once led by figures such as Walter Cronkite—whom Dokoupil vowed, in a now-infamous social media post, to best in the job in some respects.
Dokoupil is to Walter Cronkite as Trent Richardson is to Barry Sanders.
The one silver lining is that the Bari Evening News is the broadcast TV version of American Canto, not only in terms of substantive quality but in audience interest:
Which is perhaps why the ratings for Dokoupil’s first week as anchor of the “CBS Evening News” have been, to put it gently, a dud. Of course, CBS News celebrated the numbers, saying in a Tuesday press release that the 4.2 million viewers the show averaged in week one was up 4% in total audience season to date and 8% in the advertiser-coveted 25-54 demographic. CBS News also celebrated being up 58% in “total minutes on YouTube.”
It goes without saying that usually when a network touts social media numbers in a press release, the television ratings are not great—and as it turns out, the spin CBS News put on the numbers did elide over the truth about Dokoupil’s debut.
In fact, according to Nielsen data reviewed by Status, Dokoupil was down 23% year-over-year in both total audiences and the 25-54 demographic. (For comparison, ABC News slid 11% in total viewers and NBC News 10% during the similar time frame. CNN and MS NOW, meanwhile, saw year-over-year growth.) Compared to the debut week of the Maurice DuBois and John Dickerson co-hosted “Evening News,” Dokoupil was down 15% in total viewers and 19% in the key demographic (also remember, as we pointed out last year, the DuBois-Dickerson show had horrendous numbers, so it’s a low bar to clear). Perhaps more alarming to CBS News executives, Dokoupil lost ground on every night he hosted. By Friday, he had slipped under 4 million total viewers to 3.8 million, and drew only 431,000 viewers in the key demo—an erosion of 15% of total viewers from Monday and a staggering 29% in the demo.
Suffice to say, those numbers are awful.
This was pretty much inevitable; you’re not going to beat Fox News at its own game, especially when you have no experience in the actual business.Continuing to chase its viewers will only make things worse, but it’s what Bari was hired to do and she couldn’t do anything else if if she wanted to.