{"id":320706,"date":"2026-06-03T10:29:09","date_gmt":"2026-06-03T10:29:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/320706\/"},"modified":"2026-06-03T10:29:09","modified_gmt":"2026-06-03T10:29:09","slug":"james-talarico-answers-gop-vegan-taunts-with-a-plate-of-dallas-bbq","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/320706\/","title":{"rendered":"James Talarico answers GOP vegan taunts with a plate of Dallas BBQ"},"content":{"rendered":"

Democratic Senate candidate James\u00a0Talarico made a meaty point <\/a>June 2, 2026 in Dallas, chomping down on\u00a0false accusations<\/a> by President Donald Trump and Attorney General Ken Paxton that he is vegan.<\/p>\n

\u201cKen Paxton is lying about what I eat,\u201d Talarico said at a news conference outside Smokey Joe\u2019s BBQ in Dallas\u2019 Red Bird neighborhood.<\/p>\n

To prove he\u2019s a carnivore, Talarico\u00a0stopped at the small restaurant on the edge of Interstate 35E and took bites from a generous tray of brisket, ribs and boudin.<\/p>\n

The standout, he said, were brakes. What\u2019re those?<\/p>\n

Smokey Joe\u2019s brakes are rib \u201cnuggets,\u201d<\/a> owner Kris Manning told The Dallas Morning News. He compared them to a more affordable version of brisket burnt ends.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cMost people throw it away,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Each pork morsel is tossed in jerk seasoning and cooked low and slow for three to four hours. Brakes are finished with a squeeze of lemon for tanginess. Customers can order them in a basket with fries for $18.50.<\/p>\n

Talarico, a state representative from Austin, had never tried brakes before. They aren\u2019t available at many Dallas-Fort Worth barbecue joints.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Manning said brakes are \u201ca Southern Dallas thing.\u201d (Talarico called them \u201cdelicious.\u201d)<\/p>\n

Talarico ate the late barbecue lunch while drawing attention to rising food costs he says are squeezing Texas families and restaurants. He called the GOP vegan jabs “fun” but said he came to talk about “larger issues.”<\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019s going to lie about what I eat,\u201d Talarico said of Paxton, his Republican Senate rival. \u201cI\u2019m going to focus on making sure Texans can afford to eat.\u201d<\/p>\n

Talarico couldn’t resist another joke about it.<\/p>\n

\u201cWith rising prices of beef,\u201d he said, \u201cwe might all need to be vegans someday.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Democratic Senate candidate James\u00a0Talarico made a meaty point June 2, 2026 in Dallas, chomping down on\u00a0false accusations by…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":320707,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[102,104,103,95010,95705,88942,100446],"class_list":["post-320706","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-dallas","tag-dallas","tag-dallas-headlines","tag-dallas-news","tag-news-politics","tag-tp-southern-dallas","tag-tp-barbecue","tag-tp-redbird"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/320706","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=320706"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/320706\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/320707"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=320706"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=320706"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=320706"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}