CBS News has invited Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to sit at its tables during the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, TheWrap has learned.
It is unclear whether Hegseth will attend the dinner, and a Pentagon spokesperson did not respond to an immediate request for comment Wednesday. The network has invited other administration officials along with some elected Democrats, according to a person familiar with the matter.
Breaker first reported the news. A CBS News spokesperson declined to comment.
The invitation pairs a cabinet secretary whose tenure includes restricting reporters’ access to the Pentagon and repeated insults over media coverage with a news organization transforming under Editor-in-Chief Bari Weiss that critics say includes some congenial coverage of the Trump administration.
Hegseth’s tenure leading the Defense Department has included a robust effort to prevent leaks to the media, including the ouster of three top officials last year over alleged leaks and new Pentagon press guidelines that led scores of media outlets — including CBS News — to walk out of the building in October. (A federal judge ruled those guidelines were illegal last month in a lawsuit brought by the New York Times.)
But Hegseth has appeared more amenable to CBS News. “CBS Evening News” anchor Tony Dokoupil’s inaugural broadcast in January, hours after the U.S. captured Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, featured an interview with Hegseth that Weiss personally arranged. Hegseth also sat down for a “60 Minutes” interview last month to discuss the war in Iran.
The Defense Secretary has also seemed hopeful that Paramount CEO David Ellison, who owns CBS News, may instill change at another administration target: CNN, which Ellison is trying to purchase in his bid to own Warner Bros. Discovery.
Hegseth criticized CNN’s coverage of the Iran war as “fundamentally unserious” and “patently ridiculous” during a press briefing last month and said the “sooner David Ellison takes over that network, the better.”
