Mike Waltz, John Kennedy and Scott Gottlieb join Face the Nation

CBS News listed U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Mike Waltz, Republican Sen. John Kennedy, independent Sen. Bernie Sanders and former FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb for the July 26 Face the Nation lineup, and said Anthony Salvanto would bring the latest poll results. Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan airs Sundays at 10:30 a.m. ET on CBS and streams at 12:30 p.m. ET on the CBS News app.

Waltz's booking carried the clearest foreign-policy signal. CBS transcripts show he had already appeared on Face the Nation on April 19 and June 21, 2026 as U.N. ambassador, after showing up in January 2025 in his earlier role as national security adviser. That sequence placed him at the center of the administration's public case for its United Nations agenda, with the same program used repeatedly to explain shifts in how the White House is handling the international stage.

Kennedy and Sanders gave the hour a sharper domestic edge. Kennedy brought a Republican Senate voice from Louisiana, while Sanders added an independent Senate perspective that often pulls the debate leftward. Put together with Salvanto's poll results, the lineup tied the panel to voter sentiment as well as to Washington's usual partisan split, a reminder that the program was not simply booking talking heads but staging a direct test of where the electorate stood.

Gottlieb's presence pushed the discussion toward public health and federal science policy. A Dec. 7, 2025 CBS transcript identified him as a former FDA commissioner who also serves on the boards of Pfizer and UnitedHealthcare, and on March 23, 2025 he said his Face the Nation segment focused on the growing measles outbreak in West Texas and cuts to health research. CBS's transcript archive, which goes back more than a decade, shows the program repeatedly returning to national security, health and political conflict, and the July 26 panel fit that pattern by bringing all three into one broadcast.