THE ANTI-TALARICO RUMORMONGERS SEEM A LITTLE DESPERATE (updated)

James Talarico spent nearly two weeks off the campaign trail, sidelined, the candidate says, by a really bad flu. On Friday he returned to the campaign trail, making an appearance at the Austin City Limits music festival.

Talarico's absence from the campaign trail didn't interrupt his string of positive polling -- even the right-leaning Trafalgar Group says he's winning the race by 3 points -- but it did lead to some right-wing rumormongering, though not in the form I would have expected:

Talarico’s return comes after right-wing talking heads, including failed Los Angeles mayoral candidate Spencer Pratt, cited anonymous sources insisting the Austin-area state rep was locked away in a mental health facility after a breakdown.

One Twitter account even baselessly speculated that Talarico had attempted suicide.

Pratt -- who still hasn't made good on his promise in June to release damaging audio about one of the remaining L.A. mayoral candidates -- tried to make this about strength and weakness:

"You want to win these fights on the battlefield of ideas, not the minefield of poor health." But Talarico is winning -- unlike you, Mr. Allegedly Healthy Loser.

That's a tack also taken by Talarico's Republican opponent:

Jimmy appears to be having a full-blown mental Tala-freak-out on the national stage. My campaign has a simple request: proof of life. https://t.co/pzCXWmpbdN

— Attorney General Ken Paxton (@KenPaxtonTX) October 8, 2026

"Talarico is mentally fragile, easily overwhelmed, and prone to illness." That's the message here -- that Talarico is weak and therefore unelectable.

But will that be effective at all? Talarico leads this race even though he can't out-macho the Republicans and isn't trying to. They call him gay. They call him a vegan. I'm sure that the people who won't vote for him believe both of those things, and despise him as a result. This is more of the same. But are there any voters who were planning to vote for him and now won't because of this rumor? Are there any voters who were planning to stay home, but now will turn out for Paxton? If months of "Talafreako" talk haven't gotten the job done for Paxton, why would this?

The rumormongers have a very elaborate narrative. They claim to have identified a private plane, presumably carrying Talarico, that traveled to Austin from Ohio, not far from the Lindner Center of Hope, a mental health facility where Harris County judge Lina Hidalgo, a Democrat, received seven weeks of treatment for depression back in 2023.

It appears to be very likely that James Talarico flew to Ohio to seek mental treatment at the same facility Lina Hidalgo went to back in 2023 during her meltdowns. He flew back this morning to attend a music festival. This confirms my theory--he was sick two weeks ago, but there is no middle ground for any "flu" of that magnitude to impact a diabetic with a flu shot for two weeks without requiring full hospitalization. Something came up in between that caused this, and I have a feeling we are going to find out what that is next week. (And no, I am not suicidal)

— Red Eagle Politics (@RedEaglePatriot) October 10, 2026

Even if it's true, would Talarico's voters care? In 2022, John Fetterman struggled through debates after a powerful stroke and still won his Senate election. I'm not convinced that even a mental health crisis would necessarily slow Talarico's momentum. (And his explanation still remains plausible -- he is a Type 1 diabetic, and there are some powerful virus out there in the Age of RFK Jr.)

I think Talarico's haters can't believe that their efforts to dehumanize him and sink his campaign aren't enough. Maybe this will work! I don't think it will. There are voters who fall for this kind of he-man chest-thumping and they're likely to be Paxton voters, and then there are normal people, people who understand that human beings can have physical and mental health issues sometimes. I think there are enough of those for Talarico to win.

*****

UPDATE: The idiots are claiming they have proof of Talarico's stay at Lindner.

🚨 BREAKING EXCLUSIVE: Ohio mental hospital CONFIRMS James Talarico was discharged from the facility earlier this week The “flu” thing was a BIG FAT LIE Following reporting by @SaraGonzalesTX and @CarolineWren, a hospital employee told @RheinAmacher and I that Talarico had in fact been a patient at the Lindner Center of Hope near Cincinnati, Ohio, which specializes in around-the-clock mental health treatment. While I sympathize with those dealing with mental health crises, this man is CLEARLY not suited to become a US Senator representing over 30 MILLION TEXANS. The job doesn’t get easier after being elected — it only gets MORE stressful. And Talarico clearly can’t handle it. I pray he gets the help he needs, but Texans need a real representative they can rely on.

— Nick Sortor (@nicksortor) October 11, 2026

The call is being debunked as AI-generated, and X is intervening to suppress that debunking:

Elon immediately suspended this account that showed Nick Sortor’s recorded call to the mental health facility was AI generated and is preventing community notes on the Sortor post. It’s all hands on deck trying to make the fake Talarico story stick https://t.co/ZA9bdpc0b5

— Laura Bassett (@LEBassett) October 11, 2026

Folks, I'm 67 years old, which means I have a few medical issues. Therefore, I know a fair amount about our healthcare system, and I don't need AI analysis to know that the phone call is bullshit.

I know it's bullshit because no employee of any medical facility would release confidential information about a patient this way. They wouldn't even release information about a patient who had an innocuous medical problem -- say, a sprained wrist. They wouldn't acknowledge the patient by name or reveal that the patient had been treated. They damn well wouldn't tell a caller the name and release date of a patient at a mental health facility. That's a firing offense.

Al Camino posted analyses of the Sortor clip and a clip posted on X by Brian Krassenstein, in which a Lindner employee says what I'm telling you here -- that no such information would ever be released. The analyses say that the Krassenstein clip seems legit and the Sortor clip doesn't. What Camino posted has been preserved in slides 2 and 3 of this Reddit post. But anyone who knows the healthcare system knows that this information would never be released by an employee. These people have nothing.