If you compare coverage of Mr. Talarico’s disappearance for almost two weeks to President Trump going an entire 48 hours without a public event last summer, the difference can only be said to be instructive.
In normal circumstances, a major candidate for the Senate, the person who many believe will turn Texas red for the first time in a generation, disappearing from the campaign trail for several days without explanation would be a major news story. Generally speaking, candidates don’t take large amounts of time off in the final five weeks of a campaign, certainly not a high stakes one where the future of the entire country might well hinge, and if they are forced to do so for whatever reason, they are certain to explain their absence and to take steps to mitigate the impact such as holding virtual events, conducting phone interviews, and releasing videos from wherever they are to let voters know they’re still fully committed to the cause, ready and able to serve. While some such as myself and those who are supposed to be respected journalists might argue that the public has a right to know the whereabouts and health of those who seek elected office, the reason for staying in front of voters is generally far more selfish and less high minded in truth. After all, there’s an old expression that out of sight is out of mind for a reason, and any day that goes by without contacting the public is a missed opportunity to bank potentially crucial votes, especially in an era of early voting and widespread absentee ballot options. If such a thing were to happen, one would think enterprising journalists hoping to break an important story with potentially national or international impact would be lining up to find out why, pressing the candidate and the campaign for the facts, and doing a little digging on their own, but rather incredibly, one would be completely wrong, at least if a high profile Democrat is involved.
In fact, this is exactly what happened with Texas Senate candidate James Talarico for almost two weeks, and yet no one in the media seemed to care. On Saturday, September 26, Mr. Talarico campaigned in Dallas before completely disappearing from public view until October 9, when he made a surprise appearance at the Austin City Limits music festival. During this span, he apparently traveled to New York for a private fundraiser on the 28th and appeared virtually for a United States Hispanic Business Council roundtable on the 29th, but otherwise was not seen. While the campaign made no formal announcement of any kind, he told the virtual roundtable that he was “feeling under the weather” and had been diagnosed with the flu, before going completely dark until October 9. Adding to the intrigue and confusion, Mr. Talarico’s campaign announced that he would be barnstorming the entire state for the entire month of October on the 2nd. “Talarico Kicks Off ‘Knocktober’ Weekend of Action, Announces 300 events in 85 Cities Fueled by 60,000 Volunteers” claiming with “just 33 days until Election Day, Talarico’s campaign is delivering this message door-to-door, neighbor-to-neighbor,” and yet it was seven days before he officially resurfaced. Perhaps regrettably if not surprisingly, conspiracy theories began to circulate after he was gone from the campaign trail for so long, with some conservative independent journalists and influencers claiming he was receiving mental health treatment in Ohio or elsewhere, suggesting he had some sort of breakdown.
While this was less than ideal, conservatives appear to be the only ones who really noticed in the first place, creating the space for a conspiracy to take hold. Despite the prolonged absence and the lack of an official announcement about his condition, there were precious few articles on CNN or other outlets wondering what happened to a major candidate in a major race, barely any speculation about when he might return, no analyses on whether a prolonged disappearance might impact the outcome, whether he could be losing momentum or jeopardizing him and the Democrats chances, essentially nothing at all. Rather incredibly, I found myself watching CNN in the background for close to two hours while on a business trip last Wednesday, a mistake I am unlikely to repeat, but it’s worth mentioning here because the lack of attention was so pronounced. Somehow, they managed to run multiple segments on Mr. Talarico’s opponent Ken Paxton, dissecting comments he made about feeling adrift in his own campaign because the state is flooded with outside money, running clips of President Donald Trump making a few jokes at his expense, and speculating why Texas Governor Greg Abbott, who is also running for reelection, didn’t attend a recent Trump rally in the state, but throughout it all, there wasn’t a single mention of his absentee opponent, as though it were totally normal to have a disappearing candidate and the disappearing candidate would have no impact on the race itself.
When you compare the coverage of Mr. Talarico disappearing for almost two weeks without any real explanation to President Trump going an entire 48 hours without a public event last summer, the difference can only be said to be instructive. At the time, it was Labor Day Weekend and shortly before taking a couple of days off, the President appeared to have a bruise on this hand. For reasons that defy rational explanation, the combination of the two prompted rampant speculation that he’d dropped dead suddenly, and the Administration was hiding it because of course they would. As People Magazine helpfully described the overall situation and its apparently bizarre origins, sliding from one right to the other as if it were perfectly normal for people to drop dead of a simple bruise, “Rumors about Trump’s health dominated the internet conversation over Labor Day weekend, days after the president was spotted with a large bruise on his hand. On Friday, Aug. 29, ‘Trump Is Dead’ and ‘Where Is Trump?’ even began trending on X. Social media sleuths pointed to Trump’s cleared schedule over the weekend, as well as Vice President JD Vance’s recent interview with USA Today, where he spoke about being prepared to step in if anything should happen to the president.” When progressives started performing victory dances on social media, “if trump is dead ill give 1,000$ to anyone who likes or retweets this tweet,” “if 𝐭𝐫𝐮𝐦𝐩 𝐢𝐬 𝐝𝐞𝐚𝐝 i will give 20 𝐝𝐨𝐥𝐥𝐚𝐫𝐬 to anyone who likes this tweet,” “Me liking every Trump dead post even if it ain’t true cause I never gaf” typify the phenomenon, and even Democrat politicians like Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, claimed a dead President would be some sort of positive news, promising it will happen soon enough anyway even after it did not, People assured us the media had absolutely nothing to do with such an inexplicably disgusting display, claiming “Trump was not seen in public for multiple days in a row last week, which added more fuel to the otherwise unfounded theory that he was gravely ill.”
Afterwards, CNN characterized it not as a problem for the deranged, but one for President Trump himself. In a rather bizarre headline even by their standards, the outlet claimed “White House pushes back on speculation over Trump’s health.” Beyond the subtle hint that there is a problem with this health no matter what they say, they began, “President Donald Trump was back in public Tuesday to announce a new location for US Space Command headquarters — and prove that rumors of his demise have been greatly exaggerated. Trump held court in the Oval Office this afternoon, breaking a weeklong absence from the spotlight that gave rise to viral theories that the president was seriously ill or had even died. The rumors took over social media, rocketing around BlueSky and X among conspiratorial influencers who had already raised questions about recurring bruising seen on Trump’s hand.” Though Mr. Talarico is not yet forty years old, there was no such speculation after he claimed the flu had struck him down so badly he couldn’t so much as record a video message for almost ten days. To be sure, Mr. Talarico has diabetes and it is possible he was impacted more than someone else his age, but if that’s really the case, wouldn’t he have required medical attention and wouldn’t there be documentation that could fully prove the claim?
After all, if you or I were to miss more than a week of work, there’s a good chance our bosses would demand a doctor’s note of some kind, some evidence that we truly were that ill. Instead, according to The New York Times, the campaign provided time stamped security footage to prove he was at home. While they refused to release the footage or detail the extent, “The New York Times reviewed time-stamped images from a security camera at Mr. Talarico’s home, which were provided by his campaign on the condition they not be published for security reasons. The images showed Mr. Talarico around the exterior of the home and at its entrances between Oct. 1 and Oct. 8.” From there, they refused to acknowledge their own role in failing to cover the story as it was happening and completely failing to demand answers from the campaign, but did manage to blame everyone else, writing “The episode represented a wild stretch in the Texas Senate race — one of this year’s highest-profile, ugliest and most expensive contests and one that could help decide control of the upper chamber. The furor over Mr. Talarico’s absence was extraordinary on several levels. It showed how mistrust of politicians and the mainstream news media, combined with online algorithms that incentivize outrageous theories, has created a Wild West of misinformation. It offered a lesson for Democrats: In such an era, it is politically risky for a candidate, even one too ill to campaign, to disappear for nine days.”
Of course, none of this would have happened if they did their job in the first place. A candidate going completely dark in the middle of a campaign is a newsworthy story by any standard, but they didn’t treat it as such. A candidate who’s supposedly so sick he can’t record a video message, but somehow promises to be barnstorming the state at the same time, makes it even more so. A candidate who is supposedly that sick but provides no actual evidence beyond video recordings that have not been released to the public is even stranger, but a media who dutifully accepts whatever the campaign says, after the fact, without doing anything resembling speaking truth to power or digging into the details is perhaps the strangest thing of all. Perhaps even worse, the media doesn’t seem to believe they have the ability to learn the truth in the first place. Somehow, they can read President Trump’s mind and engage doctors to diagnose him from afar, reading into a bruise on his hand that he might be suffering from a serious health condition, but what actually happened to Mr. Talarico and was he as sick as he claimed is simply beyond their ability to determine.
