Megyn Kelly Slams CBS Anchor Tony Dokoupil After He Cries on Air, Calls Him ‘Effeminate’

Megyn Kelly has no time for tears.

During the Wednesday, January 7, episode of The Megyn Kelly Show, the 55-year-old political commentator discussed the moment CBS Evening News anchor Tony Dokoupil got visibly choked up on air during his first week in his new position.

While visiting different cities as part of his “Live From America Tour,” the 45-year-old journalist got emotional in Miami, Florida — where he once lived — because he felt he was “robbed of the full Miami experience” due to his father getting in trouble with the law.

“We have to talk about the new anchor of CBS Evening News,” Kelly said on her show. “There’s no crying in evening news. There might be some crying when a president is shot and assassinated right before your very eyes like we saw with [late legendary broadcaster] Walter Cronkite, though he didn’t… There was like a wiping of the eyes.”

“That’s as far as he went,” she said, adding that it’s “the dawn of a new day” and she “literally could not believe my eyes” when she saw Dokoupil cry.

Kelly told her guest, ABC News political director Mark Halperin, that she stumbled upon the video and could not believe that CBS cut the clip for promotional purposes on social media.

“You want to talk feminization of the newsroom?” she asked, before cutting to the clip of Dokoupil. “I give you the new CBS Evening News anchor in a clip he’s promoting.”

After she played the brief segment, in which Dokoupil became visibly emotional while speaking to CBS News Miami’s Lauren Pastrana about his childhood in Miami, Kelly said: “I thought for sure that story was going to end in: and they were all killed in a house fire. I was the sole survivor, in which case I would have excused the multiple tears that preceded it.”

“The sobbing, the repeated voice quivering, the inability to recover. What is that?” she asked, saying that it simply shows her that Dokoupil is “feminine.”

“You’re effeminate,” Kelly doubled down. “You’re not tough. You’re not grizzled. You don’t strike me as a shoe-leather reporter, which is what I want in my evening news anchor.”

Dokoupil’s brief breakdown aired on his second day as anchor, and just one day after he experienced an awkward on-air flub. He was named anchor in December after a major shake-up at the network.