Poor James Talarico. He just can’t seem to keep his story straight. Although that’s probably not all that surprising from a Texas leftist who has insisted that God is nonbinary and that there are six sexes.
Talarico, hoping to become the first Lone Star state Democrat to be elected to the Senate since Die Hard was in theaters, had been MIA from the campaign trail for the better part of two weeks until popping up unannounced at an Austin City Limits music festival late last week. His mysterious disappearance prompted his Republican opponent, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, and others to demand “proof of life” from the Democrat’s campaign.
Nothing to see here, Team Talarico demands. Jimmy just had a bad case of the flu.
“Hate to disappoint the conspiracy theorists, but James is still alive and meeting with voters at ACL today,” Talarico spokesman JT Ennis posted on X Friday afternoon. The campaign included proof of life, a video of Talarico glad-handing at the event.
Talarico has rejected speculation that he suffered a mental breakdown on the trail and needed some time to rest. He said he’s feeling much better now, thank you, and “you can’t believe everything you read on the internet.”
True. The same goes for political campaigns, of course. And Team Talarico has told some whoppers in dealing with the inconvenient truths of a Democrat who has done as much as anyone to “Keep Austin Weird.”
— Phil Prazan (@PhilPrazan) October 11, 2026I spoke with Rep. James Talarico earlier today in Dallas. I ask him about:
-getting the flu
-the claim he was getting treatment for a stress-induced episode
-a debate update
More tonight at 5 and 10 pm. pic.twitter.com/uqhaXHcmtv
The problem is, Talarico’s story doesn’t quite add up. At the very least, his strange absence from a very important and very expensive Senate race is a lot like his relationship status: It’s complicated.
He sure seems confused about which doctor he saw when he was first in the throes of his alleged “nasty flu.” On Sunday, Talarico told a reporter that he went to his primary care physician, presumably in his hometown of Austin. On Sept. 30, however, he told the Hispanic Business Council in a Zoom call that the night before he was feeling under the weather and had to go to Urgent Care in Dallas. That’s why he missed his face-to-face with the council, he claimed, apologizing for his absence.
Why the confusion? The dizzying effects of the flu? Maybe. Or is it because his campaign team realized that flying back from the high-priced fundraiser he attended with leftist glitterati in New York City on Sept. 29 to a Dallas urgent care facility would seem nearly impossible based on publicly available flight data.
Let’s take a closer look.
No Margin for Error
According to news accounts, Talarico hobnobbed with New York City communist Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s allies at the Greenwich Village closed-door mixer beginning at 5:30 p.m. on Tuesday, Sept. 29. Lots of leftists pitched in to Talarico’s campaign, with “suggested contributions” between $1,000 and $13,500, according to an event flyer.
Interestingly, the Democrat attempting to reinvent himself as a moderate was feted by fundraiser hosts which included three individuals with the Human Rights Campaign or its foundation. Human Rights Campaign advocates for genital mutilation of minors — something Talarico recently and speciously claimed he opposes.
The night before, Talarico was at a joint fundraiser with Ohio Democratic Senate candidate Sherrod Brown, with special crazy, angry old man guest, Robert De Niro.
It’s theoretically possible he ditched the Sept. 29 fundraiser without any media becoming aware of it, but multiple news outlets reported on the event as if he was physically present.
Assuming Talarico left the fundraiser at 7:00 p.m. Eastern Time, flight records confirm four commercial nonstops that could still have put him on the ground in Dallas that evening, with arrival at a late-night urgent care between roughly 10:35 p.m. and 11:45 p.m. Texas time.
But hitting the timeline would have required a near-perfect handoff with no margin for error. Flight time, if all went smoothly, would be around four hours nonstop.
The Federalist’s review of 26 Dallas-area urgent care facilities finds that 23 close by 8 p.m. on Tuesdays, and two more an hour later. Only Urgent Care of Texas-Oak Lawn is open on weekdays until midnight. Talarico would have had to be seen immediately.
There are some urgent care facilities in the Dallas metropolitan area that operate 24 hours a day. It’s also possible he meant that he went to an emergency room. But he didn’t say he went to an emergency room. He said he went to Urgent Care in Dallas. Why Dallas? The campaign did not return The Federalist’s request for comment and a more precise timeline of events.
Still, no public reporting places him in Dallas, or traveling, on the night of Sept. 29.
Something else to consider: air travel was messier than usual on the East Coast at that time following a powerful nor’easter days before that delayed and canceled thousands of flights. Airlines were still catching up and still dealing with delays on the 29th from the lingering “flight chaos.”
It’s possible Talarico chartered a private jet to cut through the usual snags of commercial air travel. He’d still have to deal with the post-storm bottlenecks. Also, the Democrat has said that he doesn’t own a private jet and he doesn’t have any friends with private jets. Although, based on the well-heeled leftist celebrities he has attracted to his campaign, he’s made a lot of friendly donors who enjoy the travel perks of their fortunes.
“So you’ll see on this campaign that we are flying commercial every chance whenever we have to fly,” Talarico said earlier this year at an airport campaign stop. “It’s a little crowded, as I think everyone who’s flown recently knows, but I think we’re trying to send a signal that this is a campaign of, by, and for the people.”
So if he was true to his word, that he flies the way the little people do, he would have had a difficult time making a flight that would get him back to Dallas in time to be seen at a Dallas urgent care. The trip from Greenwich Village to LaGuardia Airport, even with light traffic, would take at least a half hour. From the Village to Newark Airport the travel time is anywhere from 35 minutes to an hour or more, depending on traffic. To John F. Kennedy International, travel time on average is about 55 minutes. Then there’s the time from the airport entrance to the gate, varying by airline. Baggage claim upon arrival and getting to ground transportation.
Talarico would then have to hustle to the Oak Lawn facility, a drive that would take as much as 30 minutes, depending on what airport he was coming from.
Of four nonstop flights offered on the evening of Sept. 29 (two from LaGuardia, one from Newark, and the other from Kennedy), Talarico would have to be moving at breakneck speed — with a bad case of the flu, nonetheless — to make it from the fundraising event to the late-night urgent care facility.
That would seem highly unlikely.
‘From the Party That Propped Up Joe Biden’
It’s possible everything happened just the way Talarico and his handlers said it did. But some of the explanations don’t make sense based on what we. Talarico could clear everything up by releasing some key information.
Plenty of questions remain. Where was he when he jumped on the Zoom call with the Hispanic Business Council? He now says he was at the Hotel Indigo in Dallas. Why not at his home in Austin recovering from his newly-diagnosed flu?
Again, Talarico’s campaign didn’t respond to The Federalist’s email seeking comment. Maybe the most curious points of contention is the fact that he has since told news outlets that he saw his primary care physician. In Dallas, 200 miles north of his home?
“I was in bed, you know, drinking lots of liquids. Unfortunately, the campaign made me work from home, so I didn’t even get full days off,” Talarico told Dallas NBC reporter Phil Prazan following the Democrat’s return from campaign-imposed exile.
If the campaign made him work, you would think Talarico would have been strong enough to cut a quick video and offer a status report on his whereabouts and plans. Maybe even a PSA reminding voters to get their flu shot. That seems like something the vax-happy set would do. Also, what did his big-ticket donors think of his prolonged absence in the heat of a critical Senate campaign?
He’s clearly ready to move on from what he and his leftist friends describe as right-wing conspiracy theories.
“I’m glad to be back. Feeling much better,” Talarico said in the interview.
The accomplice media, per usual, were more than glad to snidely dismiss anything but Talarico’s version of events, without doing much to check his version of events.
CBS News is reporting that Talarico’s campaign shared security footage with the corporate media outlet that “appears to show Talarico at his home in Texas for the first eight days of this month — pushing back on claims that Talarico was hiding the reasons for his disappearance.”
“The eight timestamped images — which include watermarks from home security camera company SimpliSafe — appeared to have been taken from a camera in the backyard of Talarico’s house in the state capital of Austin. CBS News matched features in the backyard to recent satellite imagery of Talarico’s address. Though low resolution, the photos show a male figure with brown hair at various times of day and wearing different outfits,” CBS News reported.
But that low-resolution imagery doesn’t confirm the reason for Talarico’s absence from the campaign trail, and it doesn’t clear up the other timeline questions.
Ultimately, the onus is on the Talarico campaign to clarify the timeline, but it’s clear the Democrat’s handlers want their version of events to be accepted at face value.
As New York Post columnist Miranda Devine wrote, the campaign’s insistence that Talarico is the victim of “a pathetic conspiracy theory” isn’t proof that he is. It’s not enough, she wrote, “from the party that propped up Joe Biden for years and lied about his health problems.”
“Democrats don’t get the benefit of the doubt anymore,” Devine added. “When a candidate in such a crucial race goes missing for so long in the final month before the election, the situation demands proof beyond an airy flu excuse and ‘trust me’ attitude.”
Matt Kittle is a senior elections correspondent for The Federalist. An award-winning investigative reporter and 30-year veteran of print, broadcast, and online journalism, Kittle previously served as the executive director of Empower Wisconsin.