“Face the Nation” host Margaret Brennan has come under scrutiny for tough questions about redistricting and gerrymandering posed to Hakeem Jeffries on Sunday.
The exchange started after Brennan asked the House Minority Leader about comments he has made accusing Donald Trump of trying to “rig” the 2026 midterm elections.
“You said, Democrats — there are no voter denialists on our side of the aisle, you said that back in January,” Brennan began. “However, recently you have used the term ‘rigged elections’ in reference to the upcoming midterms. Democrats were appalled when President Trump used such language. How do you justify using it now?”
Jeffries claimed that he uses the term in a different context.
“I have used that term in connection with Donald Trump’s unprecedented effort to draw congressional maps in a partisan way across the country to rig the midterm elections and deny the American people the ability to actually decide who will be in the majority of the House of Representatives,” he explained.
Brennan then asked Jeffries if he is aware that “Democrats are also going through gerrymandering and redistricting,” to which he replied, “Yes, Democrats will push back aggressively to make sure we have fair maps across the country, not partisan gerrymandering, which Republicans have initiated in state after state after state.”
Many people seemed surprised by Brennan’s sharp rebuke.
Marc Elias, a prominent Democratic election attorney and founder of the Democracy Docket, wrote on Bluesky: “CBS News is just the latest news outlet to throw its lot in 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 outlets that support them is really willing to side with Trump.”
“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…,” wrote another. “Stressful aggression.”
Brennan’s recovery also called into question how CBS will navigate reporting on the Trump administration with editor-in-chief Bari Weiss steering the ship. The CBS Evening News did not cover the presidential pardon of Changpeng Zhao during Thursday night’s broadcast, although rival networks ABC, NBC and PBS did. (However, a person with knowledge told TheWrap CBS Evening News Plus — an extension of CBS Evening News — covered the pardon at the top of its broadcast. The pardon was also covered in a written piece.)
Zhao pleaded guilty to money laundering charges 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 news anchor Dan Rather blasted David Ellison’s acquisition of Weiss’s The Free Press and her new job. In a post shared on his Substack, Rather wrote that “It’s also hard to believe that Weiss will be a fair steward of the notorious 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 direction of a conservative billionaire who puts more than his thumb on the scales.”
“It’s 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 reliable source of information. Who and what should we believe today?”
The post CBS ‘Cast Its Lot With Trump,’ Critics Say After Margaret Brennan Grills Democrat for ‘Rigged Elections’ Talk | The video first appeared on TheWrap.
