CBS News host Margaret Brennan lost her cool during a conversation with acting CDC Director Jay Bhattacharya as they debated the state of public health during the Trump administration on live television. The heated exchange got extra hot under the collar after Brennan confronted Bhattacharya about the August 2025 shooting that took place at a CDC headquarters which resulted in the death of Atlanta police officer David Rose.
“You were down in Atlanta this past week. This is one year since that horrific shooting at CDC headquarters. Officer David Rose was honored this past week. He was killed last year protecting CDC employees from a gunman. And we should note he was a combat veteran, a United States Marine who had just graduated five months prior from the police academy. Three kids left behind,” Brennan said at the start of the interview.
“The shooter was motivated by misinformation about the COVID vaccine. That is why he shot over 100 bullets into the windows of the CDC. Is enough being done to counter this kind of misinformation?” she asked Bhattacharya. He responded by not engaging with the question, going on to say, “I want to focus attention on Officer Rose because …I think what the shooter did was horrific, and…you can talk about why shooters do things, but really fundamentally—,”
“Well, his father said he was brainwashed about the COVID vaccine and thought it was making him suicidal,” Brennan interjected. “I mean the thing is…to talk about the shooter puts the…emphasis on somebody who, I think, we shouldn’t be putting our emphasis on,” Bhattacharya replied. “No, I am on misinformation about vaccines,” Brennan responded.
The acting CDC director finally decided to engage with the question, but in doing so, he attempted to shift the blame for the incident onto the media and the Biden administration. “The key thing is there’s a loss of public trust in public health that happened in part because of a lot of- frankly, even on this network and on other networks, there was a particular single point of view put across during the Covid pandemic about how… that led to things that really did cause harm to people,” Bhattacharya stated.
“This is not a productive line of claims,” Brennan went on to say, seeming to take the question personally. “We covered Covid in depth on this program, like no other Sunday show did.” Bhattacharya quickly clarified, that he was not blaming Brennan or CNN specifically. “What I’m saying is, you want to talk about misinformation? The kinds of decisions and sort of the public sort of face of public health during the pandemic led to many people losing trust in public health,” he said.
Things continued to grow intense, as Brennan then said, “The Trump administration officials.” Bhattacharya responded, “No, I mean- I mean, like Biden. So Biden, for instance, censored me–” And this is where the CBS News host really started to lose it. “The pandemic began under the Trump administration, and we put those officials on our air,” Brennan shot back.
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“But- but during the- during the- just so we’re clear, the Biden administration censored me, right? They censored- they sent out direct attacks on people who disagreed on- on- on the COVID- on- on sort of whether the COVID vaccine stopped–” Bhattacharya tried to finish but was interrupted by Brennan who said, “RFK Jr. called the COVID vaccine the deadliest vaccine ever made.”
The two argued over each other for a bit, before Brennan said, “That is misinformation, and we’re not being clear about that. And I think that is dangerous. Wouldn’t you agree?” Bhattacharya then said, “People lost their jobs, Margaret, because the- the Biden administration censored people and said, ‘Look, you can’t even talk about COVID vaccine harms.–'”
“We’re talking about the shooting,” Brennan interrupted. Bhattacharya later put the anchor on the spot, saying, “What you’re talking about is you’re trying to blame the shooting on Bobby,” making a reference to RFK. “No, I’m not. I’m reading you what his father said,” Brennan fired back, clearly frustrated. She then asked the acting director what he and the CDC were doing to restore public trust in the organization, noting that President Donald Trump is working on an executive order concerning vaccines and autism.
She asked Bhattacharya what that order entails, to which he said that he couldn’t provide any specifics on it, going on to add that he believes President Trump and RFK care deeply about the rise in autism. Brennan then argued that people want real information about vaccines and the impact they have on autism. “And so I, as NIH director, have been focused on making sure that we have science that addresses that- that very complicated question about why we’ve seen a rise in autism. It’s not going to be a simple answer,” he said.
“And I- last year I authorized something called the Autism Data Science Initiative. We’re going to have a big, sort of, early, sort of- sort of, results from it in a couple of weeks from the- the dozen and more scientific teams that have been funded to look at this, with a mandate of thinking very broadly, not just genes, not- not just environmental exposures, but potential interactions,” Bhattacharya continued. “We don’t know- if you ask me as a scientist, do I know why we’ve seen this rise in autism? I’ll tell you, I don’t know the answer to that question.”
Featured Image: screenshot from embedded video