How Much Longer Is CBS Going to Carry Margaret Brennan?

This column has done the not-so-important work of chronicling the ignominious performance of CBS News anchor Margaret Brennan, at least since she made herself noticeable by marching into the rhetorical jackpot that is JD Vance by attempting to shill for Afghan terrorists residing within our borders.

That earned her notoriety as the butt of the now world-famous “I Don’t Really Care, Margaret” meme. (RELATED: Five Quick Things: Scenes From a Commonsense Revolution)

It hasn’t gotten any better since then. In fact, when Brennan had Secretary of State Marco Rubio taking her to preschool to explain that no, too much free speech didn’t cause the Holocaust, it looked an awful lot like that would be her last hurrah.

But it wasn’t.

Actually, the Brennanisms are beginning to get worse and multiply. And over the weekend she managed to get owned not once but twice on her “Face The Nation” program.

The first was disastrous enough, especially since it came courtesy of a rematch. Brennan had Rubio on for another round, and his “free speech didn’t cause the holocaust” smackdown might actually have to take a back seat to this…

It wouldn’t be Sunday Funday without Margaret Brennan maintaining her position as Most Embarrassing UVA Alum

Brennan claims not to know why Columbia’s Mahmoud Khalil is up for deportation.

Rubio: “You should watch the news.” pic.twitter.com/zFQBc6MsRc

— C’villeBubble (@CvilleBubble) March 16, 2025

We’ll see if the internet creates any “You Should Watch the News” memes because that’s a line that has a lot of potential — especially given “Face The Nation” ’s saggy ratings. Not many people watch the news, at least as CBS styles it, and it’s fairly obvious why.

The stupidity of this position that somehow Mahmoud Khalil, the pro-Hamas agitator here on a student visa, can’t be deported or it’s some sort of First Amendment violation, is hard to get over. (RELATED: Mahmoud Khalil and the Red-Green Assault on American Sovereignty)

Especially when it’s coming from Brennan, who tried to blame free speech for the Holocaust the last time she tangled with Rubio. (RELATED: Margaret Brennan and the Good Germans at CBS News)

Mahmoud Khalil doesn’t have the same rights in America that an American citizen has. Our government is stuck with American citizens and it has to put up with things we say. It so happens that the Margaret Brennans of the world don’t understand this all that well, given their implicit or explicit support for the throttling of disapproved points of view on election integrity, COVID lockdowns, and other subjects; it was OK to deplatform America’s Frontline Doctors but not a Syrian student leading rioters who terrorize Jewish students at Columbia? (RELATED: The Arrest of Columbia University’s Mahmoud Khalil: Unmasking Campus Radicalism)

Huh?

Khalil was carrying around pro-Hamas literature calling for violence against Jews and she wanted to see evidence of “material support for terrorism?”

Lady, what on earth are you talking about?

And as Rubio noted in the interview and several other times last week, that isn’t even the applicable standard here. Had Khalil been known as an outspoken supporter of Hamas, his State Department would not have given Khalil a visa to come to the U.S. In fact, you’re supposed to disclose any affiliations to terrorist groups in your visa application.

So is it all that surprising that when Khalil turns out to be a pro-Hamas agitator his visa gets revoked and they’re sending him home?

And who cares about Mahmoud Khalil’s problems anyway? It’s certainly pretty rich that the Margaret Brennans of the world are interested in making him into some sort of elite-media cause célèbre; do Brennan or the suits in CBS’s newsroom who tell her what to say really think we can’t see through all this?

If this wasn’t the latest effort to make the Trump administration look bad, would anybody know Mahmoud Khalil’s name? Of course not. He’s just another line item on the list of Things-to-be-Thrown-Against-the-Wall-in-Hopes-They’ll-Stick, sitting somewhere between egg prices and lamentations over layoffs at Voice of America. (RELATED: The Price of Eggs at CNN)

Oh, but the Rubio Beatdown Redux wasn’t necessarily even the worst of the bunch.

Brennan had Sen. Lindsey Graham on, and she proceeded to attempt to interrogate him on the question of Trump’s decision to strip security clearances and access to the government by a number of high-priced Washington insider law firms who, in concert with Team Obama (Team Biden) mob, had participated in a campaign of personal destruction of the once-and-future president and his family.

Graham’s response was quite good, but what was striking was how easy it was for him to pound her into the sand…

In a heated exchange on Face the Nation, Margaret Brennan tries to catch Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) out but it spectacularly backfires.

Brennan: “The president is trying to use government power to punish private business because he didn’t like some of the work they had been… pic.twitter.com/w6CcaNmYOQ

— DeVory Darkins (@devorydarkins) March 16, 2025

Yes, you heard that correctly. She’s trying to complain about “government actions against private business,” as though partisan Democrats like Margaret Brennan have ever had a philosophical problem with such things.

And calling Covington Burling and Perkins Coie, a pair of law firms whose business model is centered around their access to government officials and their insider status within the bureaucracy and Capitol Hill staff, “private business” ought to generate breathless guffaws from just about every American.

I could say that Margaret Brennan is a joke. I’d say it and you the reader would respond by saying “Tell me something I don’t know.” But here’s the question: Why is Margaret Brennan where she is?

Why are once-prestigious legacy TV news outlets subjecting their dwindling viewership to clowns like Margaret Brennan?

There’s a competition of sorts afoot, of course, because Margaret Brennan is perhaps no less a joke than Kaitlan Collins at CNN or Kristen Welker at NBC. In fact, network news is full of photogenic dunces whose offense isn’t just that they’re partisan Democrats but that they just plain suck at it.

Rubio and Graham didn’t even have to put forth much of an effort to make Brennan come off like an idiot. Neither did Vance when he cranked out that “I Don’t Really Care, Margaret” nuclear bomb to her career. This keeps happening and yet there doesn’t seem to be any effort toward making a change at CBS. It’s hard not to wonder where the leftist journos are who can at least hold their own without snarling or saying something disqualifyingly stupid while trying to have a debate with a Republican politician.

If it’s absolutely necessary to have the debate at all rather than an interview. I’m going to venture a guess that even CBS’s rump audience would rather listen to what Rubio has to say than hear Brennan berating him. Though maybe I’m wrong, and CBS has lost those people already.

Which begs the question why Vance, Rubio, and Graham even let themselves be booked on those shows rather than simply do a long-form podcast interview with somebody who draws a lot bigger audience, like for example Megyn Kelly.

And the success of independent New Media types like Kelly, who found themselves flushed out of alphabet-soup media and found that it was the best thing that ever could have happened to them, would seem to be a bracing development for the suits at CBS. Do they now think Brennan is the best they can do?

Didn’t CBS employ Lara Logan, Sharyl Attkisson, and Catherine Herridge not so long ago? All of them were regarded by everyone as serious journalists. One could argue all three are doing quite well now that they’re independent New Media players.

How well do you think Margaret Brennan would do if she had to swim in that deep water?

You don’t have to answer that. We’re coming rapidly to the point where we’re going to find out soon enough. Because even at a place like CBS, there has to be a level of embarrassment beyond which they’re not willing to go.

They should have reached that point by now, for certain. But given the current direction, it’s only a matter of time before she crashes into that wall.

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