On September 30th, Texas state lawmaker and the Democratic nominee for U.S. Senate in the state James Talarico appeared virtually at an event and told the audience that he’s been sick.
For a little over a week, the lawmaker stayed off the campaign trail; the absence ended when he appeared at the Austin City Limits music festival a couple days ago.
This brief absence from the campaign created a void that was filled with all kinds of claims from Talarico’s conservative opponents.
The campaign of Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, who Republicans nominated to face off with Talarico, demanded “proof of life.” His crowds led chants of “Where is James Talarico?”
While the Paxton campaign was half-trolling, they contributed to a conservative media environment that quickly spawned its own theories about what was really happening with Talarico.
Rumors flourished on social media, and a mixture of right-wing influencers and conservative media leaders helped fan the flames. One popular theory, pushed by right-wing influencer Nick Sortor, was that Talarico had actually checked into a mental hospital in Ohio. He supplied audio that appeared to show an employee at an Ohio mental health treatment facility confirm that Talarico had recently checked out of their care.
Sortor, an influencer who touts 1.6 million followers on the service formerly known as Twitter, quickly found purchase amongst other online personalities on his side of the aisle. Libs of Tiktok, a popular account whose owner has been hosted by the Trump White House as part of its effort to sanitize its role in the Epstein scandal, boosted Sortor’s exclusive, claiming it showed Talarico was “unfit to serve.” Charlie Kirk’s former organization, Turning Point, was all in. Some failed GOP candidates joined the fray as well as Trump administration staffers. Mainstays of conservative media like Townhall and BlazeTV boosted the theory.
But by Sunday night, the conspiracy had fallen apart. The treatment center confirmed Talarico had never been there (under federal law, they’re not allowed to publicly disclose patient details anyway). Talarico has been back out on the trail, and he exhibits no obvious signs of mental illness. He says he’s never even been to Ohio.
(It’s not obvious why he couldn’t just see a therapist in Texas, but conspiracy theories are usually more fun if they’re elaborate.)
At the end of this very silly conservative media cycle, it’s likely that many observers of right-wing news will continue to believe that Talarico didn’t have the flu at all. He really did check into a mental health facility in Ohio for reasons that cannot be explained.
But to everyone else in the country, a conspiracy theory that conservative media spent days egging on just blew up in the GOP’s face. The Republicans are facing the race of their lives in Texas, and instead of trying to prove to voters that they can be taken seriously on issues like the economy, the war in Iran, or other areas where the party is badly hurting, they have unleashed their army of conspiracy theorists to energize their base rather than persuade undecided voters.
There is a time when a strategy like this could have worked politically, but it increasingly looks desperate. And what’s worse than that is that it’s priming millions of conservatives to accept very low standards for the voices they should be trusting.
These influencers and media outlets are seen by conservative readers as an alternative to a mainstream media that has often leaned excessively left. But you don’t address bias with bias; and you certainly don’t address it with fantastical lying. The conservative media ecosystem is badly broken.