Tony Dokoupil has been the anchor of CBS Evening News for less than two weeks, and he’s already been threatened with a lawsuit by the White House—on camera.
Moments after President Donald Trump finished taping an interview with Dokoupil at a Ford truck plant in Dearborn, Michigan, on Jan. 13, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt approached the CBS News crew with a message from her boss, according to an audio recording obtained by The New York Times.
“He said, ‘Make sure you guys don’t cut the tape, make sure the interview is out in full,’” Leavitt said.
“Yeah, we’re doing it, yeah,” Dokoupil responded.
Then came the kicker.
“He said, ‘If it’s not out in full, we’ll sue your a– off,’” Leavitt replied.
She wasn’t laughing.
🚨 NEW AUDIO: White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt delivers WARNING direct from President Trump to CBS News anchor Tony Dokoupil and the network: Air the full, unedited 13-minute interview without cuts… or “we’ll sue your ass off.”
LEAVITT: Trump “said ‘make sure you… pic.twitter.com/65r26vHcdz— TV News Now (@TVNewsNow) January 17, 2026
The Times reported that some CBS staffers took the remark as a joke. But when Dokoupil, 45, tried to defuse the moment—“He always says that!”—Leavitt did not join in.
CBS has already forked over a hefty sum to the president once before. In 2024, Trump sued the network over the editing of a 60 Minutes interview with Kamala Harris, his opponent in the presidential election. Paramount, the network’s parent company, paid $16 million to settle the lawsuit in July 2025, despite widespread skepticism from legal experts over its merits.
ABC paid the same amount in December 2024 to resolve a separate Trump lawsuit over comments made by anchor George Stephanopoulos.
Those settlements altered the calculus for major news organizations. A lawsuit from the Trump White House isn’t bluster; it’s a promise with receipts.
Shortly after the 60 Minutes settlement, the Trump administration approved the sale of Paramount to Skydance Media, the studio run by Trump ally David Ellison.
Ellison then installed conservative-leaning opinion columnist Bari Weiss, who has no broadcast news experience, as editor-in-chief of CBS News.
Critics both inside and outside the network have questioned whether the move signaled a shift toward more MAGA-friendly coverage, a claim Weiss has denied.
The pressure is not confined to CBS. Trump and his allies have pursued or threatened litigation against multiple news organizations, including The New York Times, The Washington Post, CNN, ABC News, and the Daily Beast, signaling that legal action is increasingly used as a tool to deter unfavorable coverage.
CBS ultimately aired Dokoupil’s 13-minute Trump interview unedited that evening, which took up nearly half of the program’s 30-minute running time (not including commercials).
During the broadcast, Dokoupil questioned the president on grocery prices, Iran, and the immigration crackdown in Minnesota. Trump boasted about his economic record and told the anchor he “wouldn’t have a job right now” if Harris had won the 2024 election.
Dokoupil pushed back. “For the record, I do think I’d have this job even if the other guys won.”
Trump, however, got the final word.
“Yeah,” Trump replied. “But at a lesser salary.”
The Daily Beast reached out to both the White House and CBS for comment.
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