Transcript: Chris Krebs and David Becker on "Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan," July 19, 2026
The following is the transcript of an interview with CBS News contributors Chris Krebs and David Becker that aired on "Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan" on July 19, 2026.
Updated on: July 19, 2026 / 1:08 PM EDT / CBS News
MARGARET BRENNAN: And for more on election security, we're joined now by CBS News contributors David Becker and Chris Krebs. Good to have you both here, because I want to download from both of you what we should be understanding about this past week. Chris, the President of the United States, Donald Trump, appointed you to run the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency. That's CISA, that Senator Warner was just talking about to help states protect their election infrastructure during 2020. That was a secure election, you said the president fired you for saying that. This past Thursday, he again insisted it was not secure. Did you read- did you hear anything that changes your assessment?
CBS NEWS CYBERSECURITY EXPERT AND ANALYST CHRIS KREBS: Not- not at all. In fact, I would say that it further bolsters my confidence in the security of the 2020 election between what has been released, disclosed last week, and all the information and the results of court challenges and other things in the intervening six years. Six years. But it's also, I think, a good opportunity to reflect on the good work that the millions of- hundreds of thousands, if not million or more, election workers that helped execute the 2020 election, the tens of thousands of federal government employees that worked to protect the 2020 election, that was not something that came together a couple weeks before 2020. That was years in the making, and that work was solid.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Secretary Mullins said Friday he'll have a plan within 30 days. We are 100 days out from the midterms.
KREBS: Yeah, and- and in 2020 we had our CISA election security plan out in February of 2020--