Far-right personalities spent the weekend amplifying a bogus online conspiracy theory that Texas Democratic Senate candidate James Talarico received treatment at an Ohio mental health facility during a recent nine-day absence from the campaign trail — instead of being at home with the flu, as his team said he was.
The rumor fell apart following a comprehensive New York Times report published Monday that featured time-stamped security camera footage showing Talarico was at his Austin home between Oct. 1 and 8. However, that didn’t stop many of the provocateurs from continuing to parrot the claim.
Talarico resurfaced at the Austin City Limits music festival on Friday. The following day, he was photographed alongside country singer Kacey Musgraves at her Dallas concert.
After his appearances, some proponents of the conspiracy theory acknowledged it had been debunked — but insisted that did not matter because they were simply bringing attention to Talarico’s absence.
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“It’s not why you were missing. It’s that you went missing,” Spencer Pratt, the former reality TV star-turned-failed Los Angeles mayoral candidate, wrote on X Monday. He was one of the theory’s biggest backers, behind Tesla CEO and X owner Elon Musk.
Questions about Talarico’s whereabouts began to circulate after his opponent in the Senate race, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, demanded “proof of life” last week.
The rumor itself appeared to originate from Pratt, who posted about Talarico’s absence Friday morning.
“My sources are telling me Talarico is in a mental health facility,” Pratt wrote. “His campaign has stopped actively planning events in the vital homestretch of the campaign.”
That claim was amplified by conservative commentators, including Musk.
Caroline Wren, a former Trump fundraiser, also wrote on X on Friday: “I can confirm that we have no credible evidence that James Talarico has not checked himself into a psych ward due to a complete mental breakdown.”
The next day, she added to the speculation with another post in which she insinuated a private plane carrying Talarico flew from Austin, Texas, to Ohio to transport the candidate to the Lindner Center, a private mental health facility and psychiatric hospital in Mason, where Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo, another Texas Democrat, previously sought treatment.
On Sunday, Nick Sortor, a political content creator, released a recording of what he claimed was a hospital employee saying Talarico had been a patient at the facility.
But the center soon denied the claim.
“Representative James Talarico has never received treatment from Lindner Center of Hope,” the center wrote in a statement posted to X hours after the recording dropped.
A couple of hours later, Talarico reposted the statement along with his own: “I’ve never even been to Ohio.”
JT Ennis, Talarico’s spokesperson, called the rumor “a lie designed to promote a pathetic conspiracy theory.”
He reiterated: “Last week James Talarico was home in Austin, Texas, recovering from the flu.”
At least one conservative has apologized for amplifying incorrect information.
Political influencer Carmine Sabia wrote Tuesday on X: “I apologize for sharing the false report about James Talarico receiving mental health treatment. I relied on the reporting available then, but I got it wrong and retract it.”
“I support Ken Paxton, but the truth matters more than winning on a lie.”
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