GOP Caught Manipulating Phone Call Content To Claim Talarico Sought Mental Health Treatment

Surely the GOP wouldn’t be so terrified of Democratic Senate candidate James Talarico beating Republican Ken Paxton that they’d manufacture false evidence Talarico had a mental breakdown and got treatment in Ohio.  Just kidding. OF COURSE they would.  And there’s proof they did just that. It remains to be seen how much fallout there will be but the whole manufactured claim seems to be blowing up in the GOP’s face.  Talarico not only was as he said in Texas recuperating from a bad case of flu, there is photo and video evidence he was in Texas!

Politician’s shake a lot of hands on the campaign trail so it’s not surprising if one gets a cold, or worse the flu and in the case of the latter is laid up for a few days. Talarico for those who don’t known is a Type 1 Diabetic and for such people a bout of flu can be a lot more debilitating than for the rest of us.  Talarico got the flu in late Sept. and announced it in a video campaign appearance on Sept. 30. Yes, it hit him hard and he followed doctor’s orders and stayed home and rested. He made sure to fully recover both his health and strength so he could hit the campaign trail HARD in the last few weeks.

Republicans made a huge deal over his not making campaign appearances with even GOP candidate Ken Paxton joining in/piling on. Paxton? That’s rich because he’s terrified to even appear in front of crowds screened to be supporters or even most journalists!  Prior to Talarico’s illness one could just as easily have mocked (and I did) Paxton with ‘Where is he?’ or “Have you seen this man?’ type of stuff!  Being a Republican and Trump guy Paxton has the requisite lack of shame gene, but a well-developed hypocrisy gene.

In fact, the suddenly emboldened Paxton’s shots at Talarico included a challenge to debate. That’s particularly rich since for the better part of three months Talarico has been calling for debates and PAXTON has been the one refusing to respond, much less schedule even a single one.  Of course Talarico has wasted no time starting back calling on Paxton to debate. Ole Ken should have thought that one through because his challenge has come back to bite him in the ass!  In any case GOP activists with already sleazy reputations breathlessly claimed to have actual evidence to back up a theory making the rounds with GOPers that Paxton was receiving MENTAL health treatment.  They claimed they had a forty seven second excerpt from a phone call proving Talarico was at a clinic in freaking Ohio to recover from his (alleged) breakdown.

As you’d expect tons of GOPers including and especially those in RWNJ news jumped all over it.  I’d say today they are left with egg on their faces but what they’ve actually got from all their Trump butt kissing is another (brown, foul smelling organic ‘stuff’) dripping down. Oops.  Multiple outlets have been reporting today on the fallout and right now GOP activists Nick Sotor and Rhein Amacher are probably trying to get into Witness Protection.  Why you ask? As I said multiple outlets have reported today on how they led their fellow GOPers to dive into a cesspool. Let’s take a look at what Rolling Stone reported:

Republicans are scared of James Talarico. He has the upper hand in practically every area ahead of an election: polling, small-dollar fundraising, ground game, and popular momentum. Maybe that’s why when the Democratic Senate candidate in Texas took a week-long break from the campaign trail to recover from a bout of the flu, the hyper-online right deluded themselves into thinking it must mean the end of his campaign.

Late last week and over the weekend, conservative influencers began teasing a bombshell revelation: James Talarico had not been home in Austin during the first days of October, but in fact was secretly recovering from a psychotic breakdown at an in-patient facility in Mason, Ohio. It would upend the race, they promised. He should just come clean and suspend his campaign before they were forced to embarrass him by publishing the proof they definitely had.  Checkmate libs, the Senate is ours.

That’s just for starters. They go on to mention some other inconvenient (for Paxton and the GOP) truths. Those who Rolling Stone had earlier said had deluded themselves into thinking Talarico’s absence from campaigning surely meant it was the end of his campaign had embraced a conspiracy theory. Like all conspiracy theories it contained factual errors or at the very least overblown claims. For example the CT crap claimed Talarico had been ‘missing’ for two weeks. In truth he was off the campaign trail for only nine days during late September and the first part of October.

Talarico made a video appearance on Sept. 30 to the U.S. Hispanic Council. It was then he let people know he’d come down with the flu, hence his making a virtual appearance instead of being there in person.  He showed up again and in person in Austin, Texas at a big time (for Texans in particular) Austin City Limits Festival. (As you can see in the title picture)  There were both pictures and video posted that day had the batshit insane GOPers bothered to check. There was a tweet with a short clip his for example on none other than Elon Musk’s platform. Then there was this from a TV station down there:

That was on Friday, Oct. 9. Remember that.  Then, as also shown in the title pic on Saturday he made other appearances including in the evening when he visited country signer Kacey Musgraves who was giving a concert over in Dallas. On Oct. 10. Remember that date (and the timing – evening) too.

The whole ‘Talarico is in a psych ward’ nonsense was at fever pitch by the end of last week, complete with predictions from yet another RWNJ influencer:

On Oct. 8, The Texas-based commentator Sara Gonzalez, of The Blaze, claimed she had received “unverified information on James Talarico’s whereabouts. If true, it will END his campaign,” and began soliciting confirmation. On Oct. 9, an X account using an AI-generated profile picture and operating under the handle “TickleTexts” began to push claims that the candidate had been whisked out of the state on a private jet. Caroline Wren, a minor GOP influencer and Jan. 6 defendant, then claimed on Saturday to have identified the plane. Wren alleged that the private jet – which had no public passenger manifest – “took off from Austin and flew to tiny Hamilton airport in Ohio, which is 20 mins from the Lindner Center, a private inpatient mental health treatment facility, and then turned around and flew back to Austin, landing yesterday morning at 10:24am right before James Talarico magically reappears at the Austin City Limits music festival.”

The Rolling Stone article explains how GOPers might have seized on the Linder Clinic in Ohio as where Talarico was they claimed being treated for a psychotic meltdown.  Still, no proof of any kind was offered. So let’s go to yesterday when the whole crazy-assed conspiracy theory burst into full bloom. Not like a field of flowers, but more like a bad case of shingles.  Sotor and Amecher released a short (less than a minute) bit of audio. A phone call which suggested Talarico had just, on the evening of Saturday Oct. 10 been released from the Linden Center!  By grab GOPers thought, We GOT him. Stone cold. He is finished and Paxton has it in the bag.

Remember when I told you a couple of dates and times?  The purported phone clip ‘proving’ Talarico had ‘just been released’ was they said (and call logs back it up) was from evening on Saturday.   Yet there’s proof he was in Austin on Friday and Dallas on Saturday evening. Look, while I think Talarico is impressive and I’m also a huge Star Trek fan I don’t believe he’s capable of being in two places a thousand or so miles apart at the same time. Or was able to have “Scotty’ use the Enterprise transporter to ‘beam him’ back and forth!  It gets worse for those who promoted all the bullshit.

Amacher’s own call records show there was a lot more than the 47 seconds that got posted on Xitter.  From another article I learned there was actually a good six minutes worth. Amacher seems to have made three calls trying to elicit HIPPA protected information. Is it too much to hope he will face criminal charges?  He damn well should. Here’s the breakdown:

When Sortor and Amacher were pushed to release the full recordings, it became even more obvious that the conversations had been misrepresented, and that Talarico was not at the facility. In the series of three calls, Amacher poses as a relative (“Tim”) looking to send mail to his “cousin” James. The employee initially asks him if he has a patient code – a security measure akin to a pin number that allows authorized individuals to contact or receive information about a patient. Amacher doesn’t have one, and hangs up. In a second call, lasting six minutes and obtained by Current Revolt, Amacher calls back and says he has a code and would like to send a care package.

Amacher, by his own admission, makes up a number. The employee seems confused, and asks Amacher for the name of the person they’re trying to reach, saying there’s no one matching his request on the patient roster in front of her, and later in their computer system. It’s not until the final seconds of the recording that she suggests the system may not be updated if they don’t have a record. That final interaction was the clip initially published by Sortor and Amacher.

If all that isn’t bad enough for the Dastardly Dumbass Duo the Linder Center went and nailed their coffin shut with their own tweet:

Ouch. As the fictional Tommy Boy would say “That’s gonna leave a mark.” You’d think those who bought into this would STFU. Just slink away. Alas, there’s Megyn Kelly. Not content to trash a victim of gang rape (SHE certainly demanded to be believed when she publicly admitted sexual harassment from then Fox News boss Roger Ailes!) she has chosen to trash the Linder Center of Hope:

Despite the clear rebuke by the hospital, some on the right continue to cling to the fantasy concocted on X. Former Fox News host Megyn Kelly demanded the provider clarify if Talarico had been at their facility at any point in the last nine days, as if he just took a 1,000 mile detour from Texas for a little chat.

Personally I think, or at least hope that this kind of idiotic doubling down from Kelly (and perhaps others) will sink Paxton’s fortunes even lower than has already happened. Voters in Texas were told there was blood in the water. James Talarilco’s blood. As it turns out that blood is Ken Paxton’s and even conservatives there know it. Most of them anyway. Let’s hope there’s a political shark that is sick and tired of being lied to and it follows the trail and devours Ken Paxton.

As usual, and since Rolling Stone did such a good job reporting on this I urge you to check out the link to their article which includes Talarico calling b.s. on the whole smear campaign. And RSS takes one helluva closing shot at Paxton:

In any case, if Talarico did suffer a complete and total breakdown that required him to disappear for nine days, he seems perfectly fine now. With less than 30 days to go to the election,  he seems to be back to full steam with campaign activities. If Paxton continues to require proof of his well being, or feels Talarico owes further answers to the great people of Texas, Talarico on Sunday reiterated his invitation for Paxton to debate him “literally any time, any place, any network.” Paxton, meanwhile, has been missing from the electoral debate stage for over a decade, and is more likely to be found abroad than in his office.

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