THE RIGHT'S NEW LINE ON TALARICO AND FLU-GHAZI: OUR COMPLETELY FABRICATED RUMORS WERE FAKE BUT ACCURATE

The non-Republican media believes that the GOP's disinformation about James Talarico's absence from the campaign trail is a disaster for the disinformationists. The San Antonio Current's headline is "Conspiracy Claim About James Talarico Mental Breakdown Blows Up in Right-Wingers’ Faces." The Daily Beast says, "MAGA’s Conspiracy About Dem Star Dealt Humiliating Blow." Rolling Stone says, "The Right’s Desperate Conspiracy Theory About James Talarico Goes Up in Flames."

But right-wingers don't believe they failed -- and in their vacuum-sealed information bubble, they didn't. They know we can read what they're saying, and they know that the facts disprove their rumor of a secret stay at an Ohio mental facility (both The New York Times and CBS News have examined images from a home security system and report that the images prove Talarico was at home during the period of his alleged stay in Ohio), so they're acknowledging that, yeah, their story was fake news. But they insist that the campaign-trail absence proves that something is fishy about this Talarico fellow.

In an overheated post that runs nearly four thousand words, the Daily Wire's Matt Walsh acknowledges much of the evidence that debunks the rumormongers, including the Ohio facility's assertion that Talarico was never a patient.

Representative James Talarico has never received treatment from Lindner Center of Hope.

— Lindner Center HOPE (@LindnerCtrHope) October 11, 2026

Walsh concedes that the story was fake.

So that’s a pretty definitive statement. For his part, Talarico then responded to the post from the facility, saying he’s never even been to Ohio.

Which is true.

I’ve never even been to Ohio 😂

— James Talarico (@jamestalarico) October 12, 2026

But, Walsh says, doesn't it seem as if the story was ... fake but accurate?

A couple of things about this. Number one — it’s very possible Talarico and his campaign are hiding something. But we do have to concede that, as for the mental health institution in Ohio, this looks like a fraudulent story that was planted by GOP operatives. Maybe they were right “directionally,” as people like to say. There are reasons to think there’s something strange going on here.

And what are the "reasons"? What's Walsh's evidence that "there’s something strange going on"? Well ... just look at Talarico! He obviously didn't have a bad flu -- and he's obviously a psycho!

On September 30, Talarico was scheduled to participate in an in-person interview with the CEO of the United States Hispanic Business Council. He attended via Zoom instead, claiming he had the flu — even though, as the event moderator pointed out, he looked fine.

No one has ever had a bad flu while appearing to be healthy! Everyone knows that!

... putting aside the question of his health, it needs to be said that this has to be one of the most patronizing and phony candidates to ever run for office in this country.

Just by looking at him, you can tell that if he thought it would help him win this race, James Talarico would not hesitate to sacrifice your elderly grandmother to the gods, Aztec-style. No one is buying the idea that this guy decided out of the goodness of his heart to self-quarantine just a couple of weeks before early voting begins in one of the most important elections of the year. But we’re supposed to believe that he “couldn’t live with himself” if he infected a random person with — what, a head cold?

Walsh, who is not a doctor and who has apparently never had a bad flu or met someone who has a bad flu, continues his expert diagnosis:

That’s the other problem here. On Zoom, he comes across as someone who’s mildly congested. Whatever “fever” he has, it’s obviously a very mild one. The interview lasted an hour, and he was answering questions without any issues whatsoever.

This is why he felt the need to explicitly state that he’s very sick, and that he’s trying to protect innocent men, women, and children from his horrific illness. If he didn’t spell it out for everyone, no one would have any idea he’s sick. Even the event moderator seemed confused by the whole thing. And then he claims he’s “at his most contagious” during the virtual event, which means he shouldn’t be much sicker than he currently is. That should be the point where the fever breaks, and things begin to return to normal in a couple of days.

Walsh writes:

What we can say with certainty is that it’s extremely unusual for a candidate — who, at all appearances, was not seriously ill — to disappear from the campaign trail at a pivotal moment, for nearly two weeks.

And then, once he'd gotten better, he looked ... better! Isn't that suspicious?

Talarico finally appeared for an interview on Sunday with a local news station to explain what had happened. And he didn’t help matters.

Everything about this interview — his demeanor and his answers — makes it seem much, much more likely that he’s lying. Right off the bat, he looks perfectly healthy. If you just spent two weeks battling the flu — an illness that left you bedridden and unable to campaign for the most important election of your life, or even speak on a Zoom call — then you simply don’t look this healthy and normal when you go out in public. His weight hasn’t changed at all. It’s bizarre.

It was ... the flu! He should be scarred for life! Am I right?

Walsh isn't the only Republican propagandist who's arguing that Flu-ghazi still looks suspicious, even though the mental facility story was obviously false. Here's longtime GOP attack dog Mary Katherine Ham on X:

And here's Fox's Liz Peek:

His disappearance gave rise to a whirlwind of apparently erroneous rumors. Because Talarico has voiced some wacky ideas in the past, like believing there are six genders or that God is non-binary — which he has been forced to walk back — some voters are primed to believe such rumors....

Undoubtedly, Talarico’s progressive young base will not be deterred by his peculiar walk-about, but his lengthy absence from the campaign trail casts a cloud over his run.

Let me tell you what's going to happen to this narrative on the right. It won't be abandoned, any more that "Trump won the 2020 election" has been abandoned -- and, for that matter, any more than "Michelle Obama is a man" has been abandoned. At minimum, it will be a shibboleth, an in-joke to be shared with the like-minded, especially if Talarico becomes a senator. Any time there's a negative story about him, or even a trivial health story about him, Republicans will snigger among themselves at the frail little soyboy (even though, by that time, he will be the frail little soyboy who beat them like a rented mule). They'll all continue to believe that something was wrong, and therefore it doesn't matter that their master narrative was completely fraudulent. They'll keep pulling at the few remaining loose threads (though the only one I know of that's still unexplained is the fact that Talarico said once that he went to urgent care and later said he saw his primary care physician). They'll insist they were right for as long as Talarico is in public life, because the truth means nothing to them. The prime directive is: never apologize and stay on offense. They're all Roy Cohn.