“Face the Nation” host Margaret Brennan has come under scrutiny for fierce questions about redistricting and gerrymandering posed to Hakeem Jeffries on Sunday.
The exchange kicked off after Brennan asked the House minority leader about comments he’s made in which he’s accused Donald Trump of attempting to “rig” the 2026 midterm elections.
“You said, Democrats — there are no election deniers on our side of the aisle, you said that back in January,” Brennan began. “But recently, you’ve been using the term ‘rigged elections’ in reference to the upcoming midterms. Democrats were appalled when President Trump used language like that. How do you justify using that now?”
Jeffries argued that he is using the term in a different context.
“I’ve been using that term in the context of Donald Trump’s unprecedented effort to gerrymander congressional maps in a partisan fashion all across the country in order to rig the midterm elections and deny the ability of the American people to actually decide who should be in the majority as it relates to the House of Representatives,” he explained.
Brennan then asked Jeffries if he’s aware that “Democrats are also going through gerrymandering and redistricting,” to which he answered, “Well, Democrats are going to push back aggressively to make sure that we have fair maps across the country, not partisan gerrymandering, which Republicans have initiated in state after state after state.”
Plenty of people appeared surprised by Brennan’s sharp rebuke.
Marc Elias, a prominent Democratic-party election lawyer and Democracy Docket founder, posted on Bluesky: “CBS News is just the latest legacy news outlet to cast its lot with Trump. It settled a bogus case to please Trump, it canceled Colbert to please Trump, it hired Bari Weiss to please Trump. The number of media outlets really willing to stand up to Trump is dwindling. Support them with your loyalty.”
“So unprofessional and condescending, especially from a supposed journalist,” wrote one BlueSky user.
“And to think I always thought she was fair…. more than others…,” a second posted. “Stressful aggression.”
Brennan’s pushback also called into question how CBS will navigate reporting on the Trump administration with editor-in-chief Bari Weiss running the ship. CBS Evening News did not cover the presidential pardon of Changpeng Zhao during Thursday night’s broadcast, though rival networks ABC, NBC and PBS did. (However, an individual with knowledge told TheWrap CBS Evening News Plus — an extension to CBS Evening News — did cover the pardon at the top of their broadcast. The pardon was also covered in a written piece.)
Zhao pled guilty to charges of money laundering in November and served four months in prison in 2024, but was pardoned by the president (who has business ties to the Zhao family) this week.
In October, former newscaster Dan Rather blasted David Ellison’s acquisition of Weiss’ The Free Press and her new job. In a post shared on his Substack, Rather wrote that, “It is also hard to believe Weiss will be an equitable steward of the storied news division in light of how the Ellisons acquired it.”
“That deal and the hiring of Weiss signals to everyone, especially to the man in the Oval Office, that CBS is no longer independent,” he later added, “but under the tutelage of a conservative billionaire who is putting more than his thumb on the scale.”
“It is a dark day in the halls of CBS News, where the portraits of television news pioneers once hung — Cronkite, Murrow, Sevareid, Collingwood,” Rather noted toward the end of his post. “They were journalists who made television a trusted source of information. Whom and what are we to believe today?”
