{"id":464354,"date":"2026-10-13T03:02:13","date_gmt":"2026-10-13T03:02:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/464354\/"},"modified":"2026-10-13T03:02:13","modified_gmt":"2026-10-13T03:02:13","slug":"conspiracies-mount-after-texas-senate-democratic-candidate-james-talaricos-absence-for-nine-days-due-to-nasty-case-of-the-flu","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/464354\/","title":{"rendered":"Conspiracies mount after Texas Senate Democratic candidate James Talarico’s absence for nine days due to ‘nasty case of the flu’"},"content":{"rendered":"

WASHINGTON \u2014 Senate Democratic candidate James Talarico is clarifying the timeline of his \u201cnasty\u201d flu diagnosis after missing more than a week of in-person campaigning in the critical Texas Senate race and sparking widespread online speculation.<\/a><\/p>\n

The campaign told The Post on Monday that Talarico had visited urgent care on Sept. 29 before going to an appointment with his primary care physician in Texas the following week. The added information was intended to provide more detail on why he was sidelined in the race that will determine control of the US Senate.<\/p>\n

Politician James Talarico, left, attends the 2026 Austin City Limits Music Festival \u2013 Weekend Two at Zilker Park in Austin, Texas, Friday, Oct. 9, 2026. Getty Images<\/p>\n

His campaign also said that he\u2019s surely well enough to debate Republican Ken Paxton, whom they accused of hiding from voters.<\/p>\n

\u201cJames is excited to be back on the campaign trail after recovering from the flu,\u201d said spokesman JT Ennis in a statement Monday. \u201cIt\u2019s been 87 days since James challenged Ken Paxton to come out of hiding<\/a> and answer Texans\u2019 questions in a debate, which even President Trump called on him to do. Ball is in Paxton\u2019s court.\u201d<\/p>\n

Talarico, 37, initially said he was sick \u201cso bad that I went to the urgent care in Dallas,\u201d but when he emerged Sunday night \u2014 amid internet speculation over denied claims of a mental breakdown \u2014 Talarico said he went to his \u201cprimary care physician, but it wasn\u2019t anything worse than a nasty case of the flu.\u201d<\/p>\n

The disappearances and discrepancies on his healthcare visits fueled online speculation that he was seeking mental health treatment in Ohio \u2014 which has been debunked by the campaign and the facility itself.<\/p>\n

\u201cLast week James Talarico was home in Austin, Texas recovering from the flu,\u201d spokesman JT Ennis posted on X<\/a> after a self-described \u201cright-wing provocateur\u201d published claims<\/a> \u2014\u00a0including a purported phone call \u2014 that the Texas state rep checked himself into a Cincinnati-based treatment center.<\/p>\n

\u201cRepresentative James Talarico has never received treatment from Lindner Center of Hope,\u201d the mental health facility, which specializes in treatment for depression, anxiety, and other psychotic disorders, also wrote on X<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The candidate added himself in response<\/a>, \u201cI\u2019ve never even been to Ohio,\u201d with a crying-laughing emoji.<\/p>\n

While Talarico had been seen publicly at the Austin City Limits Music Festival on Oct. 9, GOP-aligned accounts with large followings had begun speculating about the trip to a mental clinic days after the Texas Democrat was seen visibly ill on a videotaped forum Sept. 30 with the Hispanic Business Council.<\/p>\n

Politician James Talarico attends the 2026 Austin City Limits Music Festival \u2013 Weekend Two at Zilker Park on Friday, Oct. 9, 2026, in Austin, Texas. Getty Images<\/p>\n

From Sept. 28-29, Talarico had been visiting New York City for high-dollar campaign fundraisers with fellow Senate Democratic candidate Sherrod Brown, who is running again after being ousted in 2024 by Sen. Bernie Moreno (R-Ohio), and alongside celebrities like the actor Robert De Niro.<\/p>\n

On Sunday, he told an NBC affiliate in the Dallas area: \u201cI got the flu and I\u2019m feeling much better and I\u2019m glad I had a chance to recover.\u201d<\/p>\n

After being asked whether he needed more time to recover since he\u2019s a diabetic, Talarico added: \u201cI just went to my primary care physician, but it wasn\u2019t anything worse than a, you know, nasty case of the flu.\u201d<\/p>\n

He earlier mentioned visiting an urgent care center in Dallas on the evening of Sept. 29, the same night he had been scheduled to appear at a fundraiser in Greenwich Village. <\/p>\n

Texas US Senate candidate James Talarico said he was suffering from a bad case of the flu. C-SPAN<\/p>\n

It\u2019s unclear if the Senate hopeful left that fundraiser early. His campaign issued a statement on Oct. 6 that he had contracted the flu and would return \u201csoon,\u201d which he did three days later in his appearance at the Austin-based music festival.<\/p>\n

Hours before Talarico\u2019s reemergence on Oct. 9, though, former Los Angeles mayoral candidate Spencer Pratt alleged in an X post: \u201cMy sources are telling me Talarico is in a mental health facility. His campaign has stopped actively planning events in the vital homestretch of the campaign.\u201d<\/p>\n

The claim was boosted by other Republican-aligned accounts on X, several of which claimed that Talarico had taken private jet flights between Austin and a small private plane runway outside Cincinnati to get to the Mason, Ohio-based mental health treatment center.<\/p>\n

Politician James Talarico, center, meets with fans during the 2026 Austin City Limits Music Festival \u2013 Weekend Two at Zilker Park on Friday, October 9, 2026, in Austin, Texas. Getty Images<\/p>\n

Rhein Amacher, a former 2024 Trump campaign aide, subsequently posted audio of a phone call he allegedly had with an employee of Lindner Center of Hope on Saturday night, during which the staffer can apparently be heard claiming Talarico had been \u201cjust discharged this evening.\u201d<\/p>\n

But Talarico had been publicly photographed the evening before on Oct. 9 at Austin City Limits.<\/p>\n

The social media insinuations come after Paxton, who is currently trailing Talarico in public polls, also kept a low profile off the campaign trail while traveling with his alleged mistress in Iceland<\/a> and London, the Daily Mail reported<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Talarico would beat Paxton by 2.8 percentage points if the election were held today, per the RealClearPolitics polling average<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"WASHINGTON \u2014 Senate Democratic candidate James Talarico is clarifying the timeline of his \u201cnasty\u201d flu diagnosis after missing…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":464355,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[132,134,133,2135,61240,287,13164,27,734],"class_list":["post-464354","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-austin","tag-austin","tag-austin-headlines","tag-austin-news","tag-james-talarico","tag-midterm-elections-2026","tag-politics","tag-senate","tag-texas","tag-us-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/464354","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=464354"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/464354\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/464355"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=464354"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=464354"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=464354"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}