WASHINGTON – US Senate candidate James Talarico, who is eyeing an historic Democratic midterm win in Texas, pushed back against an online conspiracy theory that he had secretly checked into an Ohio mental health facility, calling it “the craziest thing I’ve ever heard”.
The upstart candidate told MS Now on Oct 11 that a bout with the flu had caused him to step away for over a week from the campaign trail in his close race with Republican Ken Paxton, President Donald Trump’s pick to represent deeply red Texas.
“I had the flu,” Talarico told the news network. “This is the craziest thing I’ve ever heard.”
Talarico added in an interview with NBC Dallas-Fort Worth that the episode was “a good reminder that you can’t believe everything you read on the internet”.
The false narrative that Talarico was lying about the flu to conceal a mental health crisis took off on X as prominent right-wing users circulated a dubious recording that supposedly showed an employee at Ohio’s Lindner Centre of Hope confirming that he had been a patient.
Billionaire X owner Elon Musk, who has poured money into supporting Paxton, repeatedly boosted the posts, writing in one reply that “the Talarico campaign is hiding something big”.
The facility said in a statement on Oct 11 on X that Talarico “has never received treatment from Lindner Centre of Hope”.
Talarico reshared the centre’s post and quipped that he had “never even been to Ohio”, while his press secretary blasted the claims as “a pathetic conspiracy theory”.
The saga, which underscores how rapidly unverified rumours can race across the internet, is the latest case of misinformation to ruffle the hotly contested Texas race.
Talarico has already faced artificial intelligence-generated advertisements and baseless claims that he is vegan, an apparently disqualifying dietary choice in the barbecue-heavy southern state.
Questions about his whereabouts intensified over the previous week as Paxton and Trump mocked his absence in the final stretch before the Nov 3 election.
The questions morphed into conspiracy theories when pro-Trump influencers released a snippet of a call that self-described “right-wing provocateur” Rhein Amacher said he placed Oct 10 to the Ohio facility, in which an employee seemed to say Talarico had just been discharged.
Observers quickly pointed out inconsistencies in the timeline: Talarico attended a Dallas concert for country artist Kacey Musgraves that same day – and campaigned in Austin the day before.
He had also held virtual campaign events while battling influenza.
Several conservative commentators have since walked back their posts pushing the narrative about Talarico seeking treatment in Ohio, but Amacher told AFP he stands by his allegations.
A longer recording of the call published online, however, reveals that the operator Amacher spoke to repeatedly said she was finding no record of Talarico in their system.
Amacher got through after giving his name as “Tim”, saying he was trying to send a care package to a cousin and providing a four-digit patient code, the full recording shows.
AFP has not independently verified the authenticity of the call.
Federal medical privacy laws generally prohibit institutions from sharing patient information, and the centre’s website says it requires callers to provide a code determined by the patient.
Amacher admitted on X that when asked for the code, he “simply made one up”. AFP