Critics were awed on Sunday after one of the top doctors in the Trump administration sparred with Margaret Brennan on “Face the Nation.”
Jay Bhattacharya, a physician who leads Trump’s National Institutes of Health and is acting director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, was asked by Brennan about the lack of trust in public health. In his response, Bhattacharya claimed that perceived censorship during the Biden administration led to mistrust in health officials. When Brennan reminded Bhattacharya that the pandemic occurred under the first Trump administration, the interview got heated.
“Just so we’re clear, the Biden administration censored me, and people who disagreed about whether the COVID-19 vaccine stopped it,” Bhattacharya claimed, referring to the throttling of his social media posts that contradicted government guidance. Bhattacharya joined a lawsuit that claimed such actions were illegal, which the Supreme Court rejected by a 6-3 majority in 2024.
“RFK Jr.called the COVID-19 vaccine the most dangerous vaccine ever made,” Brennan shot back. “That is misinformation, and we’re not being clear about that.”
Critics were stunned by the exchange.
“Jay Bhattacharya is a dangerous, fraudulent quack who thinks COVID was a Chinese bioweapon,” Jim Stewartson, a writer who recently defeated a defamation lawsuit filed by FBI Director Kash Patel, posted on X. “But he also said we should not vaccinate people and go for ‘herd immunity’—which would have killed several million people. He’s a criminally negligent lunatic. What a charade.”
“Bhattacharya has never acknowledged he got COVID wrong. In March 2020, he said it was more likely that the disease would kill 20,000 than 2 million. Big oops there,” David Corn, a columnist at Mother Jones, posted on Bluesky. “And now he refuses to acknowledge RFK Jr.’s disinformation about the Covid vaccine. Instead, he whines that he himself was ‘censored.’”
“It’s impossible he’s this stupid…but he is. And the fact that he is the @CDCgov director should scare the s— out of you,” Don Winslow, a New York Times best-selling author, posted on X.
“For someone who supposedly cut his teeth in econ seminars, I gotta say he’s not that great at dealing with challenging questions,” Dr.Alexander Tsai, a health scientist at Massachusetts General Hospital, posted on Bluesky.
“Jay was never censored. He had his day in court and lost at the SCOTUS,” journalist Walker Bragman posted on Bluesky.
This is not going well for Bhattacharya
BHATTACHARYA: You want to talk about misinformation. The decisions during the pandemic led to many people losing faith in public health BRENNAN: Trump administration officials BHATTACHARYA: No. I mean Biden. BRENNAN: The pandemic… pic.twitter.com/xVuGvgj9h2 — Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) August 9, 2026
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