Catching Up With Talarico

I took Columbus Day off yesterdsay, and I haven't posted any update to the Talarico medical saga. The story in brief is that Sunday mnorning, Nick Sortor and Rhein Amacher challenged Talarico to disclose his whereabouts for the prior two weeks or so by 1:00 PM, or they would do it.

Good morning, @JamesTalarico! Would YOU like to reveal where you *actually* were these past couple weeks, or should me and @RheinAmacher do it? Please let us know by 1pm ET today! Thank you for your attention to this matter! 🇺🇸

— Nick Sortor (@nicksortor) October 11, 2026

With no reply by the deadline, Sortor posted what appeared to be a recording of a phone conversation between Amacher and a female voice tht identified herself as an employee of the Lindner Center of Hope medical facility in Ohio.

🚨 HOLY CRAP! James Talarico BUSTED for being discharged from a MENTAL HOSPITAL in Ohio — @NickSortor / @RheinAmacher He was at the Lindner Center of Hope. NO FLU!! EMPLOYEE: "He was just discharged." 🤯 Talarico is done. Drop out. He cannot be a United States senator! And he LIED this ENTIRE TIME. Is ANYONE surprised the guy who loves trans kids and drag queens has issues like this? The Senate is not a mental health rehab center! UNFIT FOR OFFICE. Ken Paxton will win. https://t.co/vNWg7n2Kzk

— Eric Daugherty (@EricLDaugh) October 11, 2026

The Talarico csmpaign was a bit slow to respond, but it did:

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 (@jt_ennis) October 11, 2026

By Sunday evening, Talarico had appeared in two TV interciews reiterating the flu story, more or less, and the Lindner Center announced that it had never treated Talarico. This still left questions:

Here’s the problem with the flu cover story. Talarico’s campaign never acted like it had a candidate sick with the flu. With the general election less than a month away, his team went radio silent. Worse, it posted video from old rallies and tried to pass it off as current.

Who does that over a flu bug?

Then there are the inconsistencies. Talarico claimed he was sick enough to need a week of recovery, and in nearly the same breath he complained that he never got one.

“Unfortunately, the campaign made me work from home, so I didn’t even get full days off,” he said.

So which is it? Was he flat on his back drinking liquids, or was he on the clock? If you’re telling the truth, you tend not to contradict yourself. On top of that, Talarico changed his story. When he spoke to the Hispanic Business Council via Zoom, he said he went to urgent care in Dallas. Now it’s his primary care physician, presumably in the Austin area, which is roughly three hours from Dallas.

Scott Pinsker at PJ Media puts the best face on things:

But it’s 100% true that Talarico missed 12 days of political campaigning in the final 50 days of the race. And it’s also true that his flu story is at least somewhat contradictory. . .

Again, not exactly a smoking gun. Barely a smoking match.

If this were a legal case, it’d be laughed out of court.

But it’s not a legal case; it’s a political race — which means its jurisdiction is the court of public opinion.

And in the court of public opinion, the biggest, most compelling, most deeply damaging circumstantial evidence is this: James Talarico looks like the kind of guy who’d use mental health professionals.

By yesterday morning, though, Talarico was running a new ad:

BREAKING: In new ad, James Talarico calls out Joe Biden “for failing us at the border” https://t.co/MgGCUJFy33

— Kalshi Politics (@KalshiPolitics) October 12, 2026

In Saurday's post here, I said, "If I were to theorize, I'd say that his campaign's internal polling has shown a much bleaker picture, and that the various low-T, vegan, and trans attacks have been effective." A new ad where he tries to reposition himself over the border would be consistent with this theory.

But so far, his capiagn has relied on simply denying that he was at Lindner Hope, insisting he was home with the flu, and relying on Lindner Hope at least to confirm that part of the story. The problem is that the story is skechy and not entirely consistent, while video is everywhere, and so are phone records. I'm a little surprised that the compaign didn't just produce phone records to confirm that he was, as he claimed Sunday, working from home.

By the same token, if sleuths like Sortor are still on the case, they ou.ght to be trying to get video confirmation of his whereabouts if they have other ideas. But I think Scott Pinsker has the best read on the situation: James Talarico looks like the kind of guy who’d use mental health professionals. And not just use them, he needs to use them. That guy is wound pretty tight.

UPDATE: CBS News says the campaign has showed it security camera footage placing Talarico at home during the period in question. This is what they should have been showing Sunday.