PBS Allows Panelist Tiffany Smiley to Advocate for Trump, Rip Spanberger As 'Far Left'

Tim Graham
February 25th, 2026 10:34 AM

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Live PBS coverage of Trump's State of the Union speech offered a surprising balance to the usual liberal tilt. They allowed Tiffany Smiley to sit on the set and be strongly pro-Trump in her analysis, especially at the end, when she ripped Gov. Abigail Spanberger as a fake moderate and a  "Trojan horse for the far-left policies" of the Democrats.

PBS anchor Geoff Bennett began by suggesting Trump was "objectively weakened," as if PBS were anything close to objective: "The president comes into tonight's speech objectively weakened. He's got the Supreme Court setback on tariffs. He's got his slumping approval numbers. He's got warning signs for Republicans in the midterms. How does he use this speech as a moment to reset?" Smiley rebutted that typical take, talking about Trump accomplishments like "no tax on tips" resonating with voters this year. 

 

The panel also included Kevin Madden, who's a more conventional Republican but no David Brooks; Amy Walter, their fairly liberal Monday night political pundit, and for the strongly anti-Trump left, Democrat strategist (Bernie Sanders guy) Faiz Shakir. Bennett told Madden that Trump's winning issues are now losers: "Kevin Madden, what does the president do when the issues that powered his rise, in President Trump's case, it's the economy and immigration, are now effectively liabilities?"

This ignores that Trump quickly closed the border, and the argument that the drop in violent crime might have something to do with border control and aggressive deportation. Madden spoke broadly on addressing voter perceptions on issues like the economy.

 

Anchor Amna Nawaz gently nudged Faiz Shakir to express Democrat attempts to sell themselves as the Affordability Party after Joe Biden's horrible record on inflation, but let's not mention that, this is PBS: "How are you looking at this address tonight, how are Democrats looking at this address? From the excerpts we have seen, there's a lot of focus on affordability. That's one of the Democrats' key messages right now, right?"

Shakir uncorked the Bernie-Bro line: "This is a president who’s acted on behalf of the oligarchy, and he’ll have a hard time trying to convince people otherwise."

 

After Gov. Spanberger unloaded all the Democrat talking points from colonial Williamsburg, anchor Geoff Bennett turned to Amy Walter and repeated his introductory remarks: "That's a pretty clear strategy from Democrats there, to take what have been winning issues for this president -- immigration, the economy -- and turn them into liabilities."

Amy Walter seconded that emotion: "Absolutely, she also embodied what is another message we're seeing within the Democratic Party right now, which is this idea of having a fighter. This was not somebody who was coming in saying 'well, we should probably compromise, we should work together. This was somebody who came in clearly and said this is -- as a party, we should go against President Trump, even on issues like immigration. "

It sounded like a scoop of Spanberger Helper.

 

In a stark contrast, Smiley let Spanberger have it. "I think it's interesting that they chose Spanberger, because she campaigned as a moderate, and she's doing quite the opposite. So I think she'll have a hard time really delivering on what she shared tonight, because she seems to be a Trojan horse for the far left policies" of the Democrats.

Do you know how rare it is for the words "far left" to emerge on PBS?

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