In case you missed this political earthquake, Democratic Senate candidate James Talarico spent nine days off the campaign trail this month recovering from the flu. He’s a Type 1 diabetic, which can severely complicate a flu virus, and it was otherwise very nice of him not to campaign with the virus and spread it around Texas despite how close the election is. That’s the whole boring story of what happened, which wouldn’t be news during normal times.
But these are not normal times: Talarico appears to be winning the Senate race against Attorney General Ken Paxton in a state that hasn’t elected a Democratic senator since 1988. And two damning stories were about to come out on Paxton in the WSJ and Washington Post that we might call “October surprises:” The Journal dropped video of him partying in Dubai with two fugitives who had failed to return to the U.S. to face federal healthcare fraud charges (plus his mistress, obviously), and WaPo published a story about him doing blatant corruption as Texas’ chief law enforcement officer. Even more blatant corruption than we already knew about, that is.
Republicans couldn’t let this be the thing lingering in voters’ minds as they head into a vote that poses an existential threat to the nation’s largest red state. So in the days before the Paxton stories dropped, his backers coordinated with a group of right-wing influencers (and probably the Trump administration, which pays conservative influencers on X to do this sort of thing) to concoct a viral smear about Talarico. Grifter “journalist” Nick Sortor, who’s wanted for arrest in Kentucky, claimed he had a recorded call proving that Talarico had been in a psychiatric hospital in Ohio while he claimed to be out with the flu.
Musk quickly boosted it from his own account, suggesting he knew the “scoop” was coming, and folks like Stephen Miller and Megyn Kelly and Spencer Pratt also latched onto it from theirs. All of these folks just pretended the story was proven fact, despite no actual news outlet being willing to run it. Here’s an excellent breakdown of how 50 conservative influencer accounts pushed the claim within 20 minutes, instantly giving it 9.3 million views on X:
Musk then prevented any community notes from appearing on Sortor’s post for many hours, ensuring that no one could debunk the bogus claim before it reached tens of millions of people, and suspended accounts that dug into its veracity.
The fake story got so big that the psychiatric hospital in Ohio was forced to post a tweet confirming that Talarico had never received treatment there, which must have been difficult for them to do, as they’re owned by Trump donors1. Talarico himself posted that he’s never even been to Ohio. And the NYT reviewed security footage from his home proving that he was, in fact, just out with the flu for nine days like he said. (Nevermind that Republicans have been wheeling Mitch McConnell out in a vegetable state to take votes he doesn’t even understand he’s taking after folks assumed he was dead the entire summer—a Dem candidate being out for a week is highly suspicious!)
Meanwhile, even Paxton’s people were embarrassed by how obviously fake the attempted psyop was. Here’s audio of Paxton surrogate Tony Ortiz calling it “shit work”:
Talarico still appears to be up by four points over Paxton, according to a new poll released today. But only four points of polling difference between one candidate who’s a decent, kind person who wants to help others and another who’s the most blatantly corrupt and lying piece of shit of all time is genuinely terrifying. This Texas Senate race, for me, is the one that decides whether there is hope for the United States or not. If one guy can be impeached by his own colleagues for corruption, party with fugitives in Dubai who are funneling money to him, blatantly cheat on his wife all over the world, spread wild fake stories about his opponent, refuse to even debate his opponent because he’s so afraid of what might come out about himself, run on calling Talarico a “queer vegan,” fight for the abortion ban that’s literally killing women in Texas, and still win there only because he has an R next to his name—there might just be too many voters in the country that are beyond reach.
On the bright side, Talarico’s got Kacey Musgraves.
Now why would James Talarico fly to Ohio to seek mental health treatment from a random 3-star facility owned by Trump donors? No one is able to say.