Conservative commentator Megyn Kelly has intensified her criticism of CBS Mornings anchor Tony Dokoupil, deriding his on-air persona as overly emotional and patronizing while questioning the networks judgment in elevating him.
According to Mediaite, Kelly used her SiriusXM program on Wednesday to preview a detailed look at the shows lackluster first-week ratings, which lagged behind its ABC and NBC competitors, but first zeroed in on Dokoupils presentation style. She branded him with a derisive moniker, declaring, TOprah Dokoupil, thats what I call him, because hes crying and constantly trying to therapize us through the news, and bluntly concluded that the broadcast under his leadership was failing.
Kelly replayed a segment in which Dokoupil, following his interview with President Donald Trump, reiterated his oft-stated line that his team should trust the audience to decide what to believe. Reacting to that posture, Kelly scoffed, Oh my god, the patronization, casting his approach as emblematic of a liberal media culture that assumes viewers need guidance rather than facts.
The conservative host went further, likening Dokoupil to a parody of self-help culture and mocking his tone as insufferably earnest. Hes giving Stuart Smalley vibes, she said, invoking Al Frankens famously saccharine character: Were good enough, were smart enough, and gosh darn it, people like us. I cannot get over how he continues to patronize the audience.
Kelly argued that news anchors should deliver information with clarity and backbone, not emotional coddling. Get up and down on the news and stop trying to handhold your audience like theyre a bunch of babies who need you to stroke them through every update, she added, underscoring a conservative preference for straightforward reporting over therapeutic messaging.
She then broadened her critique to CBS News editor-in-chief Bari Weiss, with whom she has an ongoing feud, suggesting that Weisss personal life shaped the networks casting decision. I figured it out. Bari is an out lesbian, and shes in a marriage to another woman, and they have kids, and so on. This is a lesbians idea of what women want. Like, hes sweet, hes soft, this is what this is going to sell, Kelly said.
From Kellys perspective, that calculation badly misreads what many women actually seek in a public figure, especially in uncertain times. She added: No, no, no! We want someone with balls, with a spine, someone who will protect us. Somebody who like when the burglar comes, well be the first out the door. They wont be hiding behind us. Like that, as we call it in my family, first defender. Whenever Doug and I go on the road, whether its like a hotel or like a rental, he knows he has to be first defender and hes perfectly fine in that role. Like Tony TOprah Dokoupil is not first defender.
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