CBS News’ Donald Trump interview was much ado about nothing

If you’re a major news outlet and you have the opportunity to interview the president of the United States, then you interview the president of the United States.

But that doesn’t mean that every interview with the president produces something of note.

On Tuesday night, the revamped “CBS Evening News” with new anchor Tony Dokoupil interviewed President Donald Trump. Given all the buzz surrounding Dokoupil and CBS News and a direction that appears to be drifting to the right since Bari Weiss became editor-in-chief, all eyes and ears were on how Dokoupil would handle the interview.

In the end, it was much ado about nothing.

Dokoupil hit on all the major topics of the day, including Iran, the economy, the investigation of Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell and the ICE shooting in Minneapolis.

But if you were looking for any insight from the president, a viral moment, an answer that would be splashed across headlines all over the world, it never happened. If you were looking for a spectacular moment — either good or bad — from Dokoupil, that never happened either.

In the end, the only news from CBS’s interview with Trump was that CBS interviewed Trump. That’s it. They talked to him. They got him on camera.

But there wasn’t much to it. That’s not meant to be a criticism, necessarily. Just a fact. If you missed it, you didn’t miss anything.

The interview lasted about 13 minutes. The setting was odd: It took place inside a noisy Ford factory in Dearborn, Michigan. Because of the loud machinery, Trump and Dokoupil had to talk loudly, and the buzz in the background was a distraction for the viewer.

Trump did what Trump always does — made wild, unproven claims such as that he has ended eight wars and that he has built the greatest economy in the world. He attacked former President Joe Biden.

Dokoupil gently pushed back on a couple of points, but mostly let Trump go unchallenged. There was no real fact-checking either in real time or after the interview.

The interview wasn’t confrontational and it wasn’t chummy either.

Ultimately, it’s apparent that the kind of interview that CBS News did with Trump on Tuesday night isn’t that effective. Or, at the very least, it’s challenging. With a rare opportunity to get Trump on the evening news, Dokoupil had no choice but to use his mere 15 minutes to get through as many topics as he could. But to get through all those topics, an interviewer has to make tough calls on how much to push back on deceptive, misleading or flat-out false statements.

The only time Dokoupil really pressed Trump was when talking about possible American action in Iran after reports that Iranian authorities would hang antigovernment protesters this week.

Trump said, “We will take very strong action. If they do such a thing, we will take very strong action.”

Trump never really got into the details. At one point, Trump said, “I haven't heard about the hanging. If they hang ‘em, you’re gonna see some things that … I don't know where you come from and what your thought process is, but you’ll perhaps be very happy.”

Dokoupil said, “What do you mean by that?”

Trump said, “We will take very strong action. If they do such a thing, we will take very strong action.”

Again, he gave no details of what that meant.

When it was over, the interview was more sizzle than steak. Actually, there wasn’t much sizzle either.

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Bizarre sign off

Can the “CBS Evening News” get through one newscast without a weird moment?

Dokoupil closed Tuesday’s newscast by telling viewers, “You may not agree with everything you hear on this broadcast, but we trust you to listen and we trust you to decide for yourself.”

Hmm, that sounds a lot like the old Fox News’ slogan of “We report. You decide.” And we can all agree that Fox News isn’t the most down-the-middle news channel on TV.

Again, it just feels like a strange thing for a network national evening newscast to say. I would ask: Who exactly was that meant for?

Speaking of CBS News

It has been quite an inauspicious start for the Dokoupil-led “CBS Evening News.” The same can be said of the beginning of Bari Weiss’ tenure as editor-in-chief of CBS News.

Which is what makes this nugget both interesting and ironic.

In their latest piece about CBS News, The New York Times’ Michael M. Grynbaum and Benjamin Mullin reported that Weiss sent a note to staff just as they prepared for Dokoupil to launch his new gig as anchor with a two-week tour of the country.

Weiss wrote to staff, “Let’s make sure every single night has something with viral potential. … The goal for this road show is not to deliver the news so much as it is to *drive the news*. We need to *be the news* for these 10 days.”

You want viral moments? You want to be the news?

Oh, the “CBS Evening News” has done both. And not in a good way.

There was a major meltdown in Dokoupil’s first weeknight newscast when the order of stories was messed up, leaving Dokoupil to say on air, “First night, big problems here.”

Grynbaum and Mullin reported that the blunder occurred, in part, because Weiss and her aides were still tinkering with the news script minutes before the newscast went on the air.

The next night, live from Miami, the newscast ended with a bizarre “salute” to Secretary of State Marco Rubio that only fed into the idea that the new CBS News is trying to cozy up to the Trump administration.

Grynbaum and Mullin wrote, “The segment was meant to be lighthearted, part of Ms. Weiss’s effort to inject more personality and informality into the newscast, a person familiar with internal discussions said. But Mr. Dokoupil’s improvised sign-off was pilloried on social media by critics who called it inappropriate for an anchor expected to report evenhandedly on Mr. Rubio’s State Department.”

The newscast has had a couple of strong moments, such as Dokoupil pressing border czar Tom Homan on the shooting of a Minneapolis woman by an ICE agent last week.

But, for the most part, viewers and media followers will continue to keep an eye on CBS News and the “CBS Evening News” for more of what Weiss calls “viral” moments.

‘Dilbert’ creator dies

Scott Adams died on Tuesday from prostate cancer. He was 68.

Adams created the popular cartoon strip “Dilbert” about life in the daily corporate world, but that strip was dropped by more than 1,000 newspapers after he made racist comments on his podcast in 2023.

The New York Times’ Richard Sandomir wrote, “For more than 30 years, ‘Dilbert’ chronicled the absurdities of the high-tech workplace and skewered management. The title character was a frustrated engineer working from a cubicle at a high-tech company whose intelligent, anthropomorphic pet, Dogbert, dreamed of world domination. Other characters included Dilbert’s co-workers, Alice, Asok and Wally; the hapless Pointy-Haired Boss; and Catbert, the fire-red-colored cat and evil head of human relations.”

At one point, “Dilbert” was syndicated to about 2,000 newspapers, placing it alongside iconic strips such as “Peanuts,” “Garfield,” and “Doonesbury.”

That all came crashing down in 2023, although there were problems even before then.

Sandomir wrote, “Over the years, Mr. Adams made remarks about women and Jews that brought him negative attention outside the silo of beloved cartoonist. He used his podcast, ‘Real Coffee With Scott Adams,’ to offer free-flowing commentary on the news, a platform that led to the comic strip’s downfall. In February 2023, he was discussing a new Rasmussen Reports poll that found that only 53 percent of Black Americans agreed with the statement, ‘It’s OK to be white,’ a phrase that has been promoted by white supremacists, according to the Anti-Defamation League.”

At the time, Adams said, “If nearly half of all Blacks are not OK with white people — according to this poll, not according to me, according to this poll — that’s a hate group. I don’t want to have anything to do with them. And I would say, based on the current way things are going, the best advice I would give to white people is to get the hell away from Black people, just get the (expletive) away … because there is no fixing this.”

He also said, “I’m also really sick of seeing video after video of Black Americans beating up non-Black citizens.”

The blowback was immediate. Major newspapers like The Washington Post, The Boston Globe, Los Angeles Times and the USA Today Network, with its 200-some newspapers, dropped “Dilbert.” Then “Dilbert’s” syndicator, Andrews McMeel Universal, dropped him.

After defending his comments on his podcast, Adams added at the time, “Most of my income will be gone by next week. My reputation for the rest of my life is destroyed. You can’t come back from this, am I right?”

Turns out, he was right.

Check out Sandomir’s piece for more on Adams’ career, as well as this piece from the Los Angeles Times’ Christie D’Zurilla.

Trading in a headset for a …. headset?

For years, those in and around football and sports media would be asked: If there is one current NFL coach or player who will make a great broadcaster, who would it be?

A name atop almost every list was Pittsburgh Steelers head coach Mike Tomlin. He’s smart, successful, a motivator with a great personality and has always had a way with words. The problem for TV networks, however, was that Tomlin was such a success as a coach (he hasn’t had a losing record in 19 seasons with the Steelers) that he seemed as if he would stay in Pittsburgh forever.

But on Tuesday, forever ended. The one personality every TV network dreams of bringing in suddenly became available. Following the Steelers’ loss Monday night in the first round of the playoffs, Tomlin stepped away from the team.

The question is: for how long? With eight current NFL head coaching openings (not counting the Steelers), Tomlin almost certainly could land another job by the time you’re done reading this sentence. But it wouldn’t be surprising if Tomlin took a year off to recharge his batteries. If he decides to do that, TV networks and streaming services will certainly line up.

ESPN NFL insider Peter Schrager said on air even before Tomlin stepped down, “Having worked at Fox, having worked at NFL Network and now here at ESPN, there’s is a chair waiting, whether it be in the booth or one of these wonderful, warm, weather-controlled sets for Mike Tomlin to make a lot of money talking football if he so wishes for a year.”

Front Office Sports’ Michael McCarthy points out that one potential landing spot for Tomlin is CBS Sports and the pregame studio show, “The NFL Today,” which just last week lost analyst Matt Ryan — who took a job in the Atlanta Falcons front office. Interestingly, Tomlin could join a studio show that includes Bill Cowher, his coaching predecessor with the Steelers.

Meanwhile, The Athletic’s Andrew Marchand reports that Fox is considered the favorite if Tomlin decides to go into TV.

Any of the networks that carry the NFL  — CBS, Fox, NBC, ESPN — would gladly welcome Tomlin, even if it is only for a year. And in the past, we’ve seen coaches who looked as if they were only going to take a year off and ended up staying broadcasters for a long time. Cowher, in fact, has never gone back to coaching since leaving the Steelers in 2006.

Tomlin also could draw interest from one of the streamers, such as Amazon Prime, Netflix or YouTube.

Because he might not be in for the long haul, and because most networks already are happy with their top game analyst, Tomlin seems more fit to end up on a studio show.

Veteran football writer Gary Myers told McCarthy, “Tomlin’s press conferences are must-watch and he is so articulate and insightful that he immediately would be a television star.”

Media tidbits

• A lifeline for Voice of America. The Washington Post’s Scott Nover with “Congress agrees to fund Voice of America, bucking Trump shutdown order.” Nover writes, “Lawmakers from both parties and houses of Congress have agreed to provide about $653 million to fund Voice of America’s parent agency, rejecting President Donald Trump’s demand to defund the international broadcaster and shut it down. A bipartisan spending bill released Sunday would allocate $643 million for broadcasting from the U.S. Agency for Global Media, which oversees VOA, plus nearly $10 million for capital improvements. That figure is down from the $867 million appropriated for the agency each of the past two years, but it’s more than four times the $153 million Trump requested that Congress provide to ‘support the orderly shutdown of USAGM operations.’”
• Seth Carlson and Mike Abrams, editors on The New York Times’ Trust team, with “‘Your Every Word Is Going to be Scrutinized’: How Our Reporters Prepared to Interview Trump.”
• Semafor’s Max Tani posted on social media that 3% of Politico staff was being laid off on Tuesday, including fewer than 10 people in the newsroom.
• The New York Times’ Jessica Testa with “Gourmet Magazine Is Back. It’s Not Exactly Sanctioned.”
• For Poynter, and copublished in collaboration with Epicenter NYC, it’s Taylor Jung with “I’m a community journalist in New York City. Here’s why Mamdani’s ‘influencer presser’ stung.”
• It wouldn't be a normal week if Megyn Kelly wasn’t embarrassing herself by bellyaching about something. Entertainment Weekly’s Joey Nolfi with “Megyn Kelly lashes out at Amy Poehler's 'embarrassing' Golden Globes win, calls Wanda Sykes 'racist' in Hollywood tirade.”

Hot type

• ProPublica’s Nicole Foy and McKenzie Funk with “We Found More Than 40 Cases of Immigration Agents Using Banned Chokeholds and Other Moves That Can Cut Off Breathing.”

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