Bhattacharya Tells CBS's Brennan the Biden Administration Censored Him During COVID

NIH Director Jay Bhattacharya, who is also serving as acting CDC director until a permanent replacement is sworn in this coming Wednesday, got into a heated back-and-forth with CBS News anchor Margaret Brennan during the August 9 broadcast of Face the Nation, according to a transcript published by CBS News.

The exchange started when Brennan asked Bhattacharya about his trip to Atlanta marking one year since the shooting at CDC headquarters that killed DeKalb County police officer David Rose, a Marine combat veteran and father of three. Brennan noted the shooter's father had said his son believed the COVID vaccine was making him suicidal, and asked whether enough was being done to counter that kind of misinformation.

Bhattacharya didn't answer the question directly. Instead, he argued that public trust in health institutions collapsed in part because "a particular single point of view" was pushed during the pandemic, citing school closures as the clearest example of the damage.

Brennan tried to cut that off. "This is not a productive line of claims," she said, according to the Daily Wire transcript excerpt. "We covered COVID in depth on this program like no other Sunday show did."

Bhattacharya didn't let it go. "I'm not blaming you specifically," he said, before making his central claim: "Biden, for instance, censored me." When Brennan responded that the pandemic began under the Trump administration and that CBS had put Trump officials on air, Bhattacharya repeated the point: "Just so we're clear, the Biden administration censored me. They sent out direct attacks on people who disagreed."

Brennan then raised Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s past statement calling the COVID vaccine "the deadliest vaccine ever made," calling that claim misinformation and asking Bhattacharya directly whether he agreed. Bhattacharya didn't answer yes or no. He instead returned to his central grievance: "People lost their jobs, Margaret, because the Biden administration censored people and said, 'Look, you can't even talk about COVID vaccine harms.'"

Brennan tried once more to steer back to the shooting itself, saying, "We're talking about a shooting." Bhattacharya replied that he was talking about why public trust eroded in the first place.

Brennan's framing had its own gap. She said CBS "covered COVID in depth" and put Trump officials on air, but she didn't address Bhattacharya's specific allegation that people were fired or censored for questioning vaccine safety claims under Biden, a separate issue from whether Trump-era officials appeared on television. Conflating criticism of Trump-era pandemic response with a direct accusation against the Biden administration's later conduct sidestepped the actual claim being made.

Bhattacharya avoided directly answering whether he considers Kennedy's "deadliest vaccine ever made" claim to be misinformation, leaving Brennan's direct question unresolved in the interview.

The interview also covered more immediate public health concerns Bhattacharya is responsible for right now: a cyclospora outbreak linked to iceberg lettuce from Mexico spanning 15 states with two deaths in late June and early July, a USDA salmonella alert affecting 27 states tied to jalapeños, cilantro, red onion and avocado, an Albertsons recall, salmonella risk in Texas eggs, and a screwworm outbreak affecting beef cattle. Bhattacharya told Brennan the CDC and FDA are tracing the outbreaks back to their sources and intervening with suppliers, but he did not commit to any restriction on imports from central Mexico, saying he couldn't speak for the FDA on that question.

Bhattacharya's term as acting CDC director ends this coming Wednesday, when a permanent director is set to be sworn in, leaving the food-safety response and the unresolved censorship dispute for his successor to inherit.