White House rebukes CBS interview after host battles NIH director over loss of trust in public health

Director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Dr. Jay Bhattacharya clashed with CBS’ Margaret Brennan on Sunday over a loss of trust in public health, as the CBS host blamed President Donald Trump’s administration officials for the spread of misinformation and was sharply rebuked by the White House.

Brennan asked the NIH director — who is also acting director of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention — about a shooting at the CDC in Georgia that left DeKalb County Police Department Officer David Rose dead when a suspect fired around 200 rounds into six CDC buildings in August 2025. 

The suspect’s father indicated his son was fixated on the COVID-19 vaccine and blamed it for making him depressed and suicidal, according to authorities.

Brennan asked Bhattacharya if the administration was doing enough to counter vaccine misinformation. Bhattacharya said they shouldn’t be putting emphasis on the shooter, as the CBS host argued her emphasis was on vaccine misinformation.

“I think 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 — even on this network and on other networks, there was a particular single point of view put across during the COVID pandemic about how, you know, that led to things that really did cause harm to people. The school closures are probably the number one thing that ,” the NIH director began.

“This is not a productive line of claims. We covered COVID in depth on this program, like no other Sunday show did,” Brennan pushed back.

The White House rebuked Brennan over the interview in a statement to Fox News Digital.

“The Fake News media openly supported unscientific lockdowns during the pandemic era and openly supported censoring anyone who dared to question those lockdowns. The Fake News media’s continued inability to show an ounce of humility and contrition is exactly why public trust in the mainstream media is even worse than public trust in public health bodies,” White House spokesman Kush Desai said. 

Bhattacharya added that the decisions put out throughout the pandemic led to a loss of trust in public health, to which the CBS host said, “the Trump administration officials.”

Bhattacharya then called out former President Joe Biden in his rebuke.

“No, I mean, like Biden. So Biden, for instance, censored me,” he said. “Just so we’re clear, the Biden administration censored me, right? They censored — they sent out direct attacks on people who disagreed on the COVID – on sort of whether the COVID vaccine stopped – “

Brennan interjected and said Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary RFK Jr. had called the COVID vaccine the “deadliest vaccine ever made,” and said that it wasn’t true.

“I’m talking about why you have the kind of distrust that’s led to the kind of sort of problems that you’re talking – we were talking about earlier in public health. That distrust was not caused by President Trump, it wasn’t caused by Bobby. It was caused by a lot of — sort of really fundamental – “

Brennan jumped in and said, “Misinformation.”

He continued, “Yeah, but often spread by the government itself regarding natural immunity, closures of schools, closures of mask mandates, people lost their jobs because of these vaccine mandates that didn’t make any public health sense. So, if you want to talk about public trust, you have to embrace that fully, right? You can’t just talk about it in a narrow political way.”

Brennan repeatedly insisted she was talking about the CDC shooting and Bhattacharya’s visit with the victim’s family.

“What you’re talking about is you’re trying to blame the shooting on Bobby,” he said, referring to RFK Jr.

NewsBusters Managing Editor Curtis Houck said Brennan’s approach underscored CBS hasn’t become “MAGA TV” as some liberal critics have charged under the leadership of Bari Weiss.

“The fact that CBS News and editor-in-chief Bari Weiss still employ Margaret Brennan is all the proof many of us need to declare that CBS News is not, in fact, that MAGA TV that has become the pants-on-fire narrative across the liberal, elitist media. Brennan’s hectoring, guilty-by-association tactics were all too predictable,” he told Fox News Digital. “Bhattacharya deftly handled Brennan’s insidious smears tying the administration’s public health policy to the CDC shooting, and mistakes from Covid. Bhattacharya was merely giving voice to the wrongful closure of schools and the ineffectiveness of most masks, to name a few, but that was intolerable for this CBS show.”

Brennan went on to confront Bhattacharya about a reported executive order on vaccines and autism.

CBS News and the NIH did not immediately respond to Fox News Digital’s request for comment.