Monday’s weekly political roundtable on the PBS News Hour sounded like the typical Republicans Are Losing hootenanny. The online headline was “Tamara Keith and Amy Walter on the GOP's vulnerability in the midterms.” But the eye-opening part was anchor Geoff Bennett trying to paper over Texas Democrat James Talarico’s absence from the campaign trail.
“You have got James Talarico, he's back on the campaign trail after falling ill. He was not seen publicly for a couple of weeks…There's all sorts of conspiracy theories about where he was. How does he push back against what is clear misinformation, disinformation without amplifying it?”
PBS @newshour host Geoff Bennett aggressively aids Talarico: “You have got James Talarico, he's back on the campaign trail after falling ill. He was not seen publicly for a couple of weeks…There's all sorts of conspiracy theories about where he was. How does he push back against what is clear misinformation, disinformation without amplifying it?”
— Tim Graham (@TimJGraham) October 13, 2026
The assumption in that question is that anyone questioning Talarico’s absence is a conspiracy theorist. Couldn’t Bennett simply ask the pundits how Talarico explains the absence? Yes, but as is typical for PBS, they’re out to trash any negative spin about Democrats as “disinformation.” Bennett doesn’t need to find any evidence, he just has framed this in a way that suggests only partisan jerks want an explanation. Don't Texas voters deserve an explanation?
At least pundit Amy Walter briefly admitted a politician should be “getting out there as quickly as possible, trying to tell people as much as you can so it doesn't look as if you're hiding something.” Then she pivoted back to the PBS Republicans Are Losing In Red States spin.
Where was PBS during Talarico’s weeks-long absence? Believe it or not, on October 8, the News Hour aired a puffy segment with the online headline “Democrats are betting on pastors and ministers in the midterms.” National “Public” Radio religion correspondent Jason DeRose cited Talarico’s schtick without discussing the absence:
DeROSE: Well, it's a really difficult needle to thread for clergy because they're so used to talking about their faith. But, again, these people, some of them have spent time in legislatures talking about their -- how their faith influences their politics, but not how it dictates their politics. And I think that, for James Talarico in particular, he came to prominence talking out against Christian nationalism while being a seminarian, while being a politician. So he's figured out how to do it as well.
So PBS has time to explain how Democrats are using pastors in Flyover Country to beat Republicans, but they don't have time for Talarico having the "flu" for two weeks.
PS: Monday's News Hour began with a segment on the federal raid on radical Rep. Ilhan Omar's home in DC. Bennett turned to New York Times journalist Devlin Barrett for his explainer, a reporter known for being tight with the Biden Justice Department. Barrett was the guy former FBI deputy director Andrew McCabe was leaking to, and then McCabe got in trouble for lying about that leaking. Barrett wrote a book titled October Surprise about how the Obama-era FBI screwed up and ruined Hillary Clinton's presidential bid.
The PBS @NewsHour led its program with the Ilhan Omar probe on Monday. Who's the Expert? Devlin Barrett, the author of the book "The Department of Revenge: How Trump Took Control of American Justice." The book is hyped like this: "No part of life in the United States has been untouched by Donald Trump’s relentless weaponization of the Justice Department." No wonder Trump took their federal money away.
— Tim Graham (@TimJGraham) October 13, 2026
