Bari Weiss faced significant resistance from CBS News on the Decoy Dan scandal: insiders say

CBS News editor-in-chief Bari Weiss faced “significant resistance” from staff at Thursday’s 9 a.m.meeting about the growing Alaska ballot controversy, network insiders told Fox News Digital.“This is a scandal,” Weiss declared to staff.According to multiple sources on the call, several CBS News staffers pushed back at Weiss’ enthusiasm over the bombshell New York Times report alleging Democrats schemed to find a Dan Sullivan to run against incumbent Republican Sen.

Dan Sullivan, in hopes of aiding Democratic opponent Mary Peltola.Many on the call shrugged it off as routine politics and said Republicans have also engaged in similar scheming.When Weiss asked for other examples of ballot confusion, “Face the Nation” moderator Margaret Brennan pointed to New Hampshire Senate candidate John Sununu, suggesting that midterm voters might confuse him with his brother, former New Hampshire Gov.Chris Sununu.CBS News political correspondent Ed O’Keefe also insisted that such tactics are nothing new.

Earlier that morning, during his appearance on “CBS Mornings,” O’Keefe stressed to viewers that what happened in Alaska “could be a dirty trick, but it’s not illegal,” adding that “this has happened before, kind of.” He pointed to the 2016 Alaska Senate race when former Anchorage mayor Dan Sullivan — no relation to the U.S.Senator of the same name — briefly ran against incumbent Sen.

Lisa Murkowski in the GOP primary, hoping “name recognition” of the other sitting senator would help his own candidacy.A separate CBS staffer on the call pushed back against the notion that colleagues like Brennan and O’Keefe were trying to downplay the scandal, telling Fox News Digital they were providing context to the story being discussed.The staffer also said the meeting was never contentious and that it was a “healthy, good conversation.”Still, Weiss called the uproar in Alaska a “great story” that the network should follow and urged staff...