Flu is a common but forgettable diagnosis for absence in politics. Not in Texas this October, where it has become the center of intrigue around James Talarico.
The Democratic Senate nominee spent nearly two weeks off the campaign trail with what he says was the flu, diagnosed at an urgent care clinic in Dallas and nursed in bed in Austin. At least he hadn’t made any campaign stops in Irkutsk.
On Sunday, after his reappearance on the campaign trail, Talarico found himself denying he had been secretly treated at a mental health facility in Ohio, a state he says he has never set foot in.
"That's not true,” Talarico told NBC Dallas-Fort Worth. “I just had the flu and I feel much better. But it's a good reminder that you can't believe everything you read on the internet.”
The supposed proof, released by conservative influencers Nick Sortor and Rhein Amacher and amplified by Elon Musk, was a clip in which a woman apparently answering calls at the Lindner Center of Hope says “he was just discharged this evening.”
It appeared to unravel within hours. The center said Talarico “has never received treatment from Lindner Center of Hope.” The full six-minute tape has the employee repeatedly finding no Talarico in her system.
And Amacher says he called on Saturday evening—the day after Talarico was photographed at an Austin festival.
So, the mental health story is dying, unless Sortor’s promise of “more recordings” on Monday morning yields game-changing new information. Don’t rule it out—stranger things have happened in politics—but don’t hold your breath either.
Occam’s Razor applies. Talarico has Type 1 diabetes—and nearly died due to it several years ago—which increases the risk of serious complications from flu, and so an extended recovery period.
But a better question is why it took hold at all. One answer may be desperation. Most polls show Talarico with a multipoint lead over his Trump-endorsed Republican rival, Ken Paxton, whose political career is pockmarked by scandal. This narrative is a gift.
But another answer may be Joe Biden, the Democratic president whose White House has bequeathed a credibility deficit to his party on issues of candidate health.
Biden’s cognitive decline, long the subject of speculation, was laid bare at the June 2024 debate against Donald Trump. Within a month, he had quit the race.
Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson’s Original Sin described scripted Cabinet meetings and aides filming him with two cameras to cover flubs. One insider called Biden “at best a senior member of the board.”
House Republicans branded it all a cover-up following an investigation, which Biden denies. Voters had already decided. A Fox News poll found 68 percent believed his administration was dishonest about his condition, including three in four independents.
Once voters believe a party managed the truth about one candidate’s health, every unexplained absence becomes a clue to a hidden truth, and the burden of proof shifts to the patient.
Naturally, Republicans noticed Talarico’s extended absence and made hay. Paxton circulated missing-person posters.
President Donald Trump wrote that “12 days is a long time to rid yourself of the so-called flu bug.” White House official Stephen Miller demanded Talarico release his medical records.
To be fair, this is not a Democratic affliction alone. Trump, now 80, has many doubters who read his bruised hands and the spoken digressions he calls “the weave” as signs of a decline kept secret from the public. In February, 61 percent told Reuters/Ipsos pollsters Trump had “become erratic with age.”
Yet his physician reported in May that he was in “excellent health,” with a perfect cognitive-screening score, and the White House attributes the bruising to handshakes and aspirin. Nothing darker has been proven.
As Thompson said, “every White House regardless of party is capable of deception.”
Fair enough, but notice the asymmetry. About Trump, voters have suspicions. But about Biden, most have concluded they were misled. Suspicion attaches to a man, but a verdict of institutional deception attaches to a party or administration.
Talarico’s explanation of flu is perfectly plausible, but that relies on both trust of person and of their party. Biden and his officials wasted some of the latter on a doomed presidential run.
A Trafalgar poll taken mid-absence—and bear in mind, this is a conservative pollster not known for Democratic overstatement—had Talarico up three-and-a-half points against Paxton.
If that lead survives Wednesday’s CNN town hall and the start of early voting on October 19, then Talarico’s campaign has moved past his absence, and voters have accepted his explanation for what happened. Biden’s shadow is too short to cover him.