‘You Never Get a Deep Sleep’: Fox News Star Peter Doocy Talks Covering Trump and Hosting His First Show

It has been a busy week for Peter Doocy, even by his usual standards.

The Fox News White House correspondent went to Israel to report on President Donald Trump’s ceasefire deal on Monday before returning to his day job covering the administration in Washington, D.C. Oh, and he has a new Sunday show, aptly dubbed The Sunday Briefing, that he rotates hosting each week with Jacqui Heinrich;the show is off to a strong start ratings-wise, and this week is Doocy’s turn to host the program.

Mediaite caught up with Doocy on Friday to talk about his recent whirlwind trip, the question that led to Trump joking he is not “heaven-bound,” and the assist his dad, longtime Fox & Friends co-host Steve Doocy, gave him during the first episode of The Sunday Briefing.

You can read that interview below:

Mediaite: You just got back from Israel. What struck you the most about that trip, now that you’ve had a few days to digest it all? 

Doocy: The thing that struck me the most was the reception that President Trump got. Like, we go all around the country, different places in the world, and there’s generally a lot of excitement for him. But you looked out the motorcade, and there were people standing on just about every balcony in the residential areas, and as close as they could get to the roadblocks, just to wave and take pictures with their phone.

And it was a really, really long day for the president. It was like a 36 hour day, and that sounds like something where, oh, I’m sure that there was downtime at a hotel — whatever they call it, executive time, when it’s a president — but we never went to a hotel. He came back, he talked to us a couple times on the plane, he did his events, he had his meetings, and then right back home. I think we left 4:00 p.m. on Sunday, and we didn’t get back until 3:00 a.m. Tuesday. So a very, very long day, and I had to take a day off to catch up on my sleep.

Mediaite: You beat me to it. One of your peers who covers the president mentioned he just doesn’t sleep and how it is a pain for reporters who are covering him. I’m wondering, what’s the schedule look like for you on these trips? 

Doocy: It’s a good question, because you can’t really go to sleep on the plane, if you think he might come back to talk, or if he might call you up to the front. So we got lucky — he came back and gaggled and took a bunch of questions right when we were leaving [Washington, D.C] and then right when we were leaving Egypt. And so it felt safe to close our eyes. But nobody wants to have a wire image photo blasted out of the president standing in the cabin with you snoring with your mouth open at like 2:00 in the morning, so you never really get a deep sleep.

Mediaite: You asked a question on that trip that went fairly viral — where the president joked he’s not going to make it to heaven, despite brokering the ceasefire. What’d you make of the reaction to that question? Were you thrown off at all by how viral it went? 

Doocy: I was surprised, but it just speaks to the fact that Donald Trump talks about so many different things, pretty much every day, whether on camera or on Truth Social or during a phone interview. And so you just always have to think of something that is going to catch not only your attention, but also his attention — that he has not talked about before.

And I always, after an interaction with the president or the press secretary [Karoline Leavitt], I really try not to look at the comments on social media. But with that one, I think the thing that surprised me the most was there were people offering their spiritual advice to the president. Like, “If he doesn’t think he’s going to get into heaven, I will come and explain to him that of course he can get into heaven.”

Mediaite: And based on that comment you just made, it’s almost like you have to keep the president on his toes. Do you have a strategy on that front, for asking him questions that will keep things interesting for both you and him? 

Doocy: You know, I always looked at this job during Joe Biden’s presidency as my main job is to get the president talking about something that is not in the daily brief [or] in the talking points.

And with this president, it is to get him talking about something that he hasn’t said yet. You know, these are serious times, and he doesn’t get a ton of credit for having a pretty good sense of humor about offbeat questions, and so I’m just always trying to think of something that could capture his imagination — because he consumes a lot of news. He knows what’s out there. He sees pretty much everything. I’m never worried about asking him something that he doesn’t know about, like that he hasn’t seen on TV or read in the New York Post yet.

So I’m just always trying to get a little bit of insight from him, because he is the president, and we have never had an opportunity to get this kind of insight from any of them before.

Mediaite: Your time as a White House Correspondent started when President Biden took office. Now, after eight months covering Trump’s second term, what stands out to you about covering him, compared to Biden? 

Doocy; The biggest difference in terms of my approach is that, when I would go into an event with President Biden — which were kind of few and far between, especially in the second half of his term — the thing that would stress me out is “I don’t know if I’m going to get him to talk. I don’t know if I’m going to get him on the topic I need.”

Whereas, the thing that stresses me out with President Trump is, when I go in, “I don’t know if I have enough questions.” And he’s the president, it’s not like you can just throw some random thing out there. You have to have something well constructed for him. The whole world is watching. And so the difference is that President Trump really likes to engage with the press. He wants his own thumbprint on as many different stories as possible. And so far this term, they have had a lot of success with having him involved. You look at any news program, any newspaper, any big website’s homepage, you can do “Control F” for Trump, and you’re going to find 40 results.

Mediaite: With The Sunday Briefing, this is your first time hosting a show. What’s the key difference between reporting on the White House and hosting a show that wants to give the audience a macro look at what’s going on in Washington? 

Doocy: The biggest difference is there is so much more time [to fill.] Like today is a perfect example. We’re going into a pool spray with President Trump and Volodymyr Zelensky, and I would anticipate that I’m going to get a few questions to each. So I’m editing out questions in my Word Document that I don’t think rise to the level for either leader, and I’m ordering them so that I get to the most important thing.

Whereas with the show, I don’t have to worry about the time at all. In fact, the first day that I was doing the show, first time ever solo anchoring with a panel, I asked all the questions I had written down, and then I looked up at the stage manager, and there were still three minutes left. That is an eternity!

And so, the biggest difference is just the time. You still want the quality of the questions to be high, but there is just so much extra time.

Mediaite: What’d you do to fill that extra time? 

Doocy: The first show debuted as people were lining up to go into Charlie Kirk’s memorial service in Arizona. And so I was able to just refer to a live picture of a long line and ask each of the panelists for their reflections about Charlie Kirk and what this moment means politically. And then it was finally time for a commercial break.

Mediaite: This one is almost cliche, but does your dad give you any pointers on hosting a show? Or is there anything you take away from watching him do it for so long?

Doocy: He has helped me a ton. And for that first show, I had him fly into Washington to help me figure everything out. Because I’ve got White House reporting pretty figured out — you can always change your approach a little bit. But doing a show was completely foreign, and we have a great team in the bureau that works on this five days a week. But it was really helpful to have my dad at my house and coming into the show with me.

In fact, when I realized I had three minutes left and looked over at the stage manager, I also looked over at my dad and he was the one pointing to the live picture like, “Ask about this.” So that was very, very helpful. And I know not everyone can count on that kind of help, so I will continue calling on him.

And some good color about that first weekend — I was in the United Kingdom with President Trump on Thursday of that week, and I had an interview with him at 5:00 p.m. at the White House on Friday. And my flight landed at 3:30 p.m. at Dulles in Friday rush hour traffic. So I had my dad come right to the White House, and I had my wife use Uber Courier — which I did not know existed, but it was a great use of only $30 — to send a suit over to the White House. And I showed my dad the questions I had written up on the plane, he said, “You’re ready,” and we did the interview [which was taped on Friday and ran that Sunday].

Mediaite: There are obviously quite a few Sunday shows focused on politics. What have you been thinking in terms of how you can put your own flavor or spin on it? 

Doocy; The game plan was and is just to try and make it look different. And maybe it’s a little cliche to say like, a next generation Sunday show, and it’s going to be a work-in-progress for the first couple months. But it’s something that Jacqui and I are trying to figure out every week — how can we make the show look a little bit different?

Like this week, I’m going to run a little package of selfie videos that I shot in Israel and Egypt, giving a behind-the-scenes look of what it’s like on a crazy, 36 hour -long day. We’ve never done anything like that before, maybe it’ll work, and we’ll do it again. And maybe it won’t, and we don’t have to [do it again]. But I think there’s a top-down understanding that the show is an experiment for right now, and if we try something and it doesn’t work, no big deal. Just don’t do it again.

Mediaite: Last thing — what do you do to decompress from the job when you get a day off? 

Doocy: The number one thing I do to decompress is just play with my kids. We work so much that you miss some stuff during the day, and I just always want to make sure that I am there as much as I can be. So playing with my kids, who are two and a half and six-months-old, that is my favorite way to decompress.

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