James Talarico Lost?

Texas Democrat’s Bizarre Disappearance Is Not Disappearing

Where in the world was James Talarico?

Much to the dismay of the Texas Democrat’s supporters, this question does not seem to want to go away. Much to the glee of Republican Ken Paxton and his supporters, the story may even be taking on a life of its own.

Even the usually Democrat-favoring corporate media outlets are reporting that Talarico did indeed “go dark” for a period of time, making no media appearances and appearing at no fund-raisers or other events.

Talarico’s campaign staff has been putting out a narrative that he was bedridden with “the flu.”

Unsurprisingly, Ken Paxton’s campaign has been alleging there was another, darker reason.

What corporate media outlets have confirmed is that James Talarico has indeed not been seen on the campaign trail since the end of September, when he begged off attending an event in person, claiming a “flu” diagnosis.

Talarico disclosed his diagnosis on September 30, when he joined a U.S. Hispanic Business Council event in Edinburg by video. He had been scheduled to attend in person.

“I was starting to feel kind of under the weather a few days ago and last night it got so bad that I went to the urgent care here in Dallas, and I was diagnosed with the flu,” Talarico told attendees. “I’m running a fever, and I’m at my most contagious right now, and I guess I’ve been shaking too many hands on the campaign trail and so I want to keep everybody safe.” If he passed the illness to “someone’s grandmother or baby,” he said, he “couldn’t live with myself.”

Paxton’s campaign keeps its own count. By its tally, Talarico has not held a rally since September 16 or appeared in person in Texas since September 26. Two days after that, he was in New York City for a fundraiser hosted by actor Robert De Niro, sharing the bill with Ohio Senate nominee Sherrod Brown. His urgent care visit came the following night, according to the timeline Talarico gave the Hispanic Business Council.

We should note, however, the headline Newsweek used for their reporting on Talarico’s apparent absence:

At a minimum, Newsweek’s headline would appear to accept the Paxton campaign’s claim that Talarico has been MIA from the campaign trail for some twelve days.

Paxton, meanwhile, had some political sport with Talarico’s disappearance by posting a “Missing” meme on X.

Last Friday (October 9), the New York Times weighed in with a report that arguably attempted to dispel some of the growing controversy, highlighting Talarico’s appearance at the Austin City Limits Music Festival, where he seemed to dismiss rumors he had sought in-patient mental health treatment.

Mr. Talarico’s campaign said for days that the candidate has been recovering from the flu, and that he would return to the campaign trail this weekend. A spokesman for the campaign, JT Ennis, said that Mr. Talarico had held “more than 100 public events” and shaken “tens of thousands of hands” before getting sick.

In the interview on Friday, Mr. Talarico said there was no truth to any rumors that were spreading on the internet about his absence, including one that he had been receiving some sort of mental health treatment. “Just a reminder not to believe everything you read on the internet,” he said.

Mr. Talarico spent about 15 minutes greeting people at a sign for the music festival, and stopped to pose for photos as he moved about the grounds. Mr. Talarico dabbed his face with a handkerchief in the heat of the Austin afternoon.

That his appearance at the festival was fairly brief might play into the narrative of someone recovering from significant physical illness, but it also undercuts any narrative of James Talarico as a physically robust figure—a notable narrative deficit given the highly masculine mythos that is embedded in Texan culture.

The Daily Mail’s reporting on Talarico’s absence and reappearance also appears to acknowledge that his explanations thus far will not satisfy many outside of his core constituencies.

A political strategist who is not involved with Talarico’s campaign and spoke anonymously with Daily Mail said that canceling public events, especially private events to raise money, at such a pivotal time was a big worry.

His absence comes at a time when polls show him in position to be the first Democrat in almost 30 years to win statewide in Texas.

‘I wanted to dismiss the rumors, but when I heard about him canceling the fundraisers, that gave me pause. It’s crunch time. No (candidate) would be turning down money right now,’ said the strategist, who has worked on both Democrat and GOP campaigns in Texas and nationwide.

The Daily Mail’s headline also does not help Talarico

Even Hispanic outlet Voz does not appear to be giving Talarico much grace with its headline

However, corporate media and second-tier media outlets such as Voz are being kind compared to what more conservative outlets such as PJ Media are now reporting, which is that independent investigative journalists Nick Sorter and Rhein Amacher are claiming confirmation that Talarico checked into an Ohio mental health facility.

On the call, Amacher asks a woman who answers the phone at the Lindner Center of Hope whether the facility has anything for James Talarico.

“It looks like he was just discharged this evening,” the employee says after a long pause. “That’s why I don’t have it.”

Amacher then asked to confirm he had the correct place, and the employee did in fact confirm he was speaking to the Lindner Center of Hope in Mason, Ohio.

We should note that the Lindner Center of Hope is an actual facility and is located in Mason, Ohio. We should further note that the Center’s stated privacy policy makes the Amacher recording ethically problematic.

In addition, if an employee of the Center did discuss Talarico’s patient status with Amacher, that employee committed a fairly severe HIPAA violation, as the statute precludes the disclosure of personally identifiable health information.

That being said, if the recording is legitimate, we are left with the inescapable conclusion that James Talarico was a patient at the facility.

This brings us to an interesting dilemma for the Talarico campaign.

While HIPAA precludes a healthcare facility from publicly disclosing patient information, it is entirely within James Talarico’s rights to authorize and even request the Lindner Center disclose any dates of admission and discharge they might have for him—which would then clear the Center to confirm that Talarico had never been a patient there should that be the case.

Thus far, the Talarico campaign has not done that.

If the Talarico campaign does not take that step, are people justified in inferring from that silence that he was at some point a patient at the Linder Center? Certainly the Paxton campaign wants people to infer that.

Republican content creator and political commentator Red Eagle Politics has offered up a similar analysis.

Here are the three counter-arguments of cope about the Talarico tape:

A) There is another James Talarico or someone with a very similar name who was recently discharged from that facility (pretty damn weird coincidence given the plane situation)

B) The employee was just trying to get Rhein to screw off (unlikely because she seemed patient and never talked to him before, not sure she’d pretend to violate HIPAA for that)

C) The call is entirely fake (despite the call log, previous shown attempts/call recordings to the facility, and despite the fact it is a trusted source who has never done anything like this before, and does not want a giant lawsuit on his hands)

I think it’s evident that there is objectively at least a 70% chance Talarico was at that facility for some amount of time, whether he was sick earlier in his period of absence or not. The odds that the Talarico campaign would just go dark for almost 2 weeks without providing any updates, or not try to milk the flu for fundraising/political purposes is strange. If the flu was so bad to warrant hospitalization, there would be evidence of that (and possibly a “Get Well, James” rally near the hospital). The guy likely has a flu shot as he is diabetic, and I just can’t see him having an “urgent care takes care of it” flu that warrants him going dark for 12 days. If he truly wanted to “not infect anyone”, he likely still does telerallies.

Not to mention the plane that checks out with the airline he frequently flew arriving to Austin that morning from an airport in suburban Cincinnati (strange coincidence), and the fact that his friend in Texas had used the Ohio facility before. Let’s not be naive here either way, and if more evidence comes out, this cover-up is objectively more corrupt than anything Paxton has ever done. Ever. The race is virtually over based on that alone.

While mental health advocates in particular will object to attaching any stigma to Talarico seeking any treatment for a serious mental health concern, the political reality is that the disclosure of such treatment is likely lethal to anyone’s political aspirations. It was revelations of mental health treatment that doomed George McGovern’s Vice-Presidential pick Thomas Eagleton in the 1972 Presidential campaign.

While corporate media has at least initially declined to carry the Lindner recording story line, based on a Google News search for “Talarico” stories, they are not shying away from the black hole that has been Talarico’s campaign schedule the past two weeks. The Austin-American Statesman’s coverage even appears to throw some shade on the “flu” narrative put out by Talarico’s campaign staff, noting that he did not appear to be under the weather when he opted to attend an event in the Rio Grande Valley virtually instead of in person as originally planned.

Talarico looked clear-headed and strong during the hourlong interview. And had he not mentioned the illness in his introductory remarks, it’s doubtful anyone in the audience or watching the video would have suspected anything was amiss, apart from a little sniffling.

But when the Democrat canceled a couple of campaign appearances over the next few days and essentially went dark for more than a week, Paxton’s people pounced. They circulated memes of “Missing” posters on social media, set up a tipline where the public could report sightings and issued a “still no proof of life” news release.

Will the questions surrounding Talarico’s absence from the campaign trail continue? Will the mental health treatment angle be fully confirmed or will it be eventually debunked?

Those are not questions his campaign wants to be answering at this late stage in the election, but those are the questions James Talarico’s campaign may have little choice but to address in the coming days.