If this exchange between House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) and CBS’s Margaret Brennan is any indication, it would seem that some partisan gerrymandering is more acceptable than others. Ditto for the acceptability of talk of “rigged elections.”
Watch as Jeffries justifies both as Brennan performatively questions, but ultimately waves Jeffries through:
Margaret Brennan confronts Hakeem Jeffries on his use of "rigged elections" to describe off-year gerrymandering, only to offer zero pushback to his ridiculous "fair maps" response. No "Faces of Brennan" here! pic.twitter.com/0PPCe2Z04H
— Jorge Bonilla (@BonillaJL) October 26, 2025
CBS FACE THE NATION
10/26/25
11:03 AM
MARGARET BRENNAN: I want to ask you about something you said. You said Democrats – "there are no election deniers on our side of the aisle." You said that back in January. But recently you've been using the term "rigged elections" in reference the upcoming midterms. Democrats were appalled when President Trump used language like that. How do you justify using that now? Doesn't that undermine faith for voters you need to show up?
HAKEEM JEFFRIES: No, I've been using that term in the context of Donald Trump's unprecedented effort to gerrymander congressional maps in a partisan fashion all across the country in order to rig the midterm elections and deny the ability of the American people to actually decide who should be in the majority as it relates to the House of Representatives. The framers of the constitution were very clear.
BRENNAN: You know Democrats are also going through – through gerrymandering and redistricting.
JEFFRIES: No, no, no, – well, Democrats are going to push back aggressively to make sure that we have fair maps across the country, not partisan gerrymandering –
BRENNAN: Well –
JEFFRIES: Which Republicans have initiated in state after state after state.
BRENNAN: Leader Jeffries, thank you for your time this morning. We'll be right back.
Brennan deserves some modicum of credit for taking Jeffries to task over his use of “rigged elections”. It is also true that there are some on the left, unaccustomed to seeing Democrats face even a semblance of a tough question, who will watch this exchange and whine about whatever changes may have come to CBS News. But as we know, the devil is in the follow-up.
With the “rigged elections” question out of the way, Brennan allowed Jeffries to breeze through with no follow up or further engagement to some responses that, quite frankly, demanded from viewers a willing and substantial suspension of disbelief. The interview concludes, quite weakly, with Jeffries making an unchallenged point about Democrat gerrymandering being an effort to bring about fair congressional maps. This is the rhetorical equivalent of saying that Joe Biden allowed millions of illegal aliens to enter the country in order to secure the border.
There was no constant hectoring from Brennan, no thousand faces made as was the case with that classic interview with Vice President JD Vance. After the initial question, there was only quiet deference. It’s (D)ifferent, apparently, when a Democrat defends partisan gerrymandering and what until recently used to be derided as election denialism.
