Republicans are scared of James Talarico. He has the upper hand in practically every area ahead of an election: polling, small-dollar fundraising, ground game, and popular momentum. Maybe that’s why when the Democratic Senate candidate in Texas took a week-long
break from the campaign trail to recover from a bout of the flu, the hyper-online right deluded themselves into thinking it must mean the end of his campaign.
Late last week and over the weekend, conservative influencers began teasing a bombshell revelation: James Talarico had not been home in Austin during the first days of October, but in fact was secretly recovering from a psychotic breakdown at an in-patient facility in Mason, Ohio. It would upend the race, they promised. He should just come clean and suspend his campaign before they were forced to embarrass him by publishing the proof they definitely had. Checkmate libs, the Senate is ours.
The conspiracy theory hinged on several bold and increasingly outlandish assumptions. The first was that Talarico had been “missing” for over two weeks — a claim heavily promoted by Talarico’s Republican opponent, Ken Paxton. (In reality, Talarico was off the campaign trail for just nine days between late September and early October, between a virtual appearance before the U.S. Hispanic Business Council on Sept. 30, and in-person attendance to the Austin City Limits music festival on Oct. 9.)
Almost immediately after the Talarico campaign announced that the candidate was ill, rumors began to circulate among the right.
On Oct. 8, The Texas-based commentator Sara Gonzalez, of The Blaze, claimed she had received “unverified information on James Talarico’s whereabouts. If true, it will END his campaign,” and began soliciting confirmation. On Oct. 9, an X account using an AI-generated profile picture and operating under the handle “TickleTexts” began to push claims that the candidate had been whisked out of the state on a private jet. Caroline Wren, a minor GOP influencer and Jan. 6 defendant, then claimed on Saturday to have identified the plane. Wren alleged that the private jet — which had no public passenger manifest — “took off from Austin and flew to tiny Hamilton airport in Ohio, which is 20 mins from the Lindner Center, a private inpatient mental health treatment facility, and then turned around and flew back to Austin, landing yesterday morning at 10:24am right before James Talarico magically reappears at the Austin City Limits music festival.”
Why The Lindner Center of Hope? In 2023, Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo received treatment for depression at the center. Maybe it’s the only one in the country that accepts Texas Democrats? Lindner quickly became the focal point for online sleuths, and in their frenzy to find the smoking discharge papers, ended up incinerating the tenuous bonds holding the conspiracy together.
On Sunday, right-wing influencers Nick Sortor and Rhein Amacher posted a 47-second recording on X purporting to contain “proof” that Talarico had been a patient at the Lindner Center. In the recording, which begins in the middle of the supposed call, an unnamed and unidentified woman tells the caller that Talarico “was just discharged this evening.” The caller confirms that he is speaking to the Lindner Center for Hope. The tape was of dubious authenticity to begin with. But as Sortor and Amacher provided more details, the story fell apart.
For starters, the call violated the stated patient protection standards of Lindner barring staff from disclosing patient information without written consent from the individual. According to Amacher, he had placed a series of calls to the Lindner Center on October 10, around 8:30 p.m. Now remember, in the early afternoon of October 9, Talarico had met with voters at Austin City Limits. On the night of October 10, he attended Kacey Musgraves concert in Dallas, Texas. The woman in the October 10 recording states that Talarico had been “discharged this evening.” In order for that to be possible, Talarico would have had to have traveled (or more likely teleported) from Austin to Ohio for a brief in-patient overnight stay, cured, and been discharged with enough time to dance to “Dry Spell.”
On top of that, the supposed private jet flight that ferried Talarico from Ohio back to Texas took place around 9 a.m. on Oct. 9. None of it added up.
When Sortor and Amacher were pushed to release the full recordings, it became even more obvious that the conversations had been misrepresented, and that Talarico was not at the facility. In the series of three calls, Amacher poses as a relative (“Tim”) looking to send mail to his “cousin” James. The employee initially asks him if he has a patient code — a security measure akin to a pin number that allows authorized individuals to contact or receive information about a patient. Amacher doesn’t have one, and hangs up. In a second call, lasting six minutes and obtained by Current Revolt, Amacher calls back and says he has a code and would like to send a care package.
Amacher, by his own admission, makes up a number. The employee seems confused, and asks Amacher for the name of the person they’re trying to reach, saying there’s no one matching his request on the patient roster in front of her, and later in their computer system. It’s not until the final seconds of the recording that she suggests the system may not be updated if they don’t have a record. That final interaction was the clip initially published by Sortor and Amacher.
In a final blow, the Lindner Center — likely inundated with calls from journalists and conspiracy theorists — released a statement on Sunday stating that “Representative James Talarico has never received treatment from Lindner Center of Hope.”
Amacher responded to the post by remarking that the center was entitled to [their] opinion, no matter how ignorant or detached from reality it may be.” One would suggest he sit with that statement a little longer.
Despite the clear rebuke by the hospital, some on the right continue to cling to the fantasy concocted on X. Former Fox News host Megyn Kelly demanded the provider clarify if Talarico had been at their facility at any point in the last nine days, as if he just took a 1,000 mile detour from Texas for a little chat.
The Talarico campaign categorically denied the conspiracy. “This is a lie designed to promote a pathetic conspiracy theory. Last week James Talarico was home in Austin, Texas recovering from the flu,” JT Ennis, a spokesperson for the campaign, wrote on social media.
“I’ve never even been to Ohio ,” Talarico wrote in his own response to the hooplah.
In any case, if Talarico did suffer a complete and total breakdown that required him to disappear for nine days, he seems perfectly fine now. With less than 30 days to go to the election, he seems to be back to full steam with campaign activities. If Paxton continues to require proof of his well being, or feels Talarico owes further answers to the great people of Texas, Talarico on Sunday reiterated his invitation for Paxton to debate him “literally any time, any place, any network.” Paxton, meanwhile, has been missing from the electoral debate stage for over a decade, and is more likely to be found abroad than in his office.
Click here to read the full article.
