Where Is James Talarico? What His Disappearing Act Means for Pivotal Texas Senate Race

Okay, first before we give you the facts of the day, run Hyde Fight in Fadelles is streaming now only on Daily Wire. It's an ode to the great action movies of the 80s and 90s. There's even a love story which nobody expected. And you can support Daily Wire's mission to continue making movies that people actually want to watch. Go check it out. Hey everyone, I'm Tim Rice. Welcome back to another edition of Behind the Story. Today, I'm joined by my colleague, Daily Wire reporter Jacob Wheeler. Jacob, thanks so much for coming on. Thanks for having me, Tim. So, Jacob, usually on this show, we pick one story and we take that headline and then we ask the reporter to go behind the story, thus the name of the show. But with you, I want to do something a little bit different because you are on a generational run covering the run up to the midterms, specifically what's going on in Texas. So I'm just going to rattle off some of the headlines you've had in the past week. Exclusive. Trump to hold Saturday, Rally and Tennessee aims to supercharge base. Four week warning, the midterms enter their final stretch. Black Democrat officials says James Taloriko has a big race problem. Taloriko Outreach event canceled as campaign schedule comes under fire. Meet the Blue State Senate candidate giving Dems Hartburn. Ken Paxton's estranged wife makes her choice in Texas Senate race and I could go on and on and on and that's not even including some of the pieces that you have of videos that have implicated the Taloriko campaign which we can get to in a minute. So I guess just to start off, what is what's your sense of what's going on with the midterms? How are you feeling? What are you seeing? Talk to us. Yeah, so obviously we're less than a month away until the midterm elections. And I think at this point of the game, Republicans are really focused on juicing the Republican MAGA base. We see that with President Trump. He is blitzing the country basically on this 30 day midterm tour. He's going into deep red territory from Nebraska, Ohio, Texas. He's going to be intent to see this weekend. As you mentioned. And so I think Republicans right now are shifting away from some of the persuasion game and kind of now trying to juiced juice the Republican base with some of these culture war items that we see obviously immigration is a huge issue in the minds of Republican voters. And I think try to quell some of these economic concerns with gas prices and lingering inflation. And we'll see if it works. Right now, we're doing this as you mentioned, we're doing this weekly midterm update for our viewers with the daily wire and the polls do still paint a bleak picture for the GOP on the national level. But what I think is what interesting is is you look at the macroeconomic level and it looks so bad for the for the GOP. But when you dive into these individual races in these states, it paints a much more optimistic picture, especially some of these blue winning states like Minnesota, New Hampshire, Michigan, for example, you know, so when you dive into these individual races, I think there's some places for the GOP not only to defend their territory, but maybe even gain some seats as well. Yeah, I think that's absolutely right. And I want to we'll go back to some of the actual races, but you mentioned Trump and the kind of Trump hitting the campaign trail in these last couple of weeks. We obviously cover this, but you know, as everyone knows, Trump speeches are long and the rambling, the weave, as he likes to say. So as someone who probably has watched more of the speeches than certainly than me and probably than many of our listeners, can you give us a sense of just what's the president been saying? What sort of notes is he hitting? Obviously, the headlines always tend to be when he goes off script, right? When he starts talking about the ballroom or Iran or something. But what has he actually been saying about the races, about the midterms? Right. I think he's trying to draw a clear contrast between what his administration has accomplished in these past two years and what the Democrats are selling on the other side. I think he's basically in his weave kind of style. He's basically trying to tell, you know, these voters, you may not love everything I'm doing. You may not love every aspect of what my administration has done. But don't forget what our country was going through in these past two years and why you decided to vote for me and to vote for us. And he will go through his accomplishments. I mean, the, the big, beautiful bill, you know, had some tangible, you know, accomplishments that that bill was in past taxes was going to go up for everyone across the country. He, he leans on no taxes on tips, no taxes on over time, two big examples. You know, I think he talks a lot about crime, public safety. I think that ties very well into immigration. Obviously, virtually no one is entering the border, entering the country illegally through the border. Since under this under this administration, you know, there's a lot of Republicans who aren't happy with the deportation levels. But when you look at the numbers, they are still by and large historic deportation level. So he is definitely emphasizing that. But I think he's really honing in on these individual democratic candidates. He's, you know, in Texas, for example, last night, he was mocking James Towerico for being absent for now, day 12 now with supposedly the flu in Michigan. He's, uh, he's kind of exploiting Abdul L Syed's weaknesses with, you know, some of his outwanda statements and connections to Hassan, Hassan Piker, you know, in Ohio, he's, you know, lambasting Sherrod Brown. You guys just kicked him out two years ago. Why do you want to bring him back? He's for men and women's sports. So I think he's going into these individual states to kind of go through his accomplishments. But as also as you mentioned, he's a, he's a free, free Wheeler, you know, he will go off script. He will assail these candidates. And I think what he's trying to do again, he's trying to make this election not a referendum on him per se, but a choice election between him and what he calls crazy on the other side. Yeah, it's such a great point. And I think, you know, it's again, I think a lot of commentary has sort of revolved around the fact that Trump hasn't been doing a lot in the, on the campaign trail. Certainly we've heard grumblings and rumblings from some Republican candidates about the president not doing enough. But to your point, yeah, I mean, that's obviously when the president's not on the, on the ballot, right? At this point in time, you know, in 2026, most midterm elections, there's two elements, or there's obviously the local elements, which the national news is never going to cover. And then there's the kind of national referendum element, which in this case, it's not about a president. It's about a party. And in his own way, buried in those speeches, you get, you do get a little bit of that. We also saw earlier this week, the vice president, JD Vance, had kind of a sort of dipped into a kind of similar Trumpian thing where he was asked about socialism. And he said, you know, I don't really know what socialism means anymore. But I think it means that they want boys and girls sports, which is not really what socialism means. But you can kind of see how that rhetoric is building. I want to talk now about James Taloriko. We've mentioned him a couple of times. This is, of course, the Democrat Senate nominee in Texas running against the Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton. It's been a busy campaign after a messy Republican primary. Taloriko is very liberal, but also very popular and seems like it's going to be a tight race. But as you said, he's been absent. I'm going to do one more headline roundup this time with dates. So on September 23rd, you published exclusive Taloriko's pastor said Jesus didn't die for sins, slander's Virgin Mary. On September 25th, exclusive video, Taloriko's pastor sounds off on Dem's uncomfortable beliefs. September 29th, exclusive New Daily Wire undercover video, pokes holes in Taloriko's trans kid makeover. And then September 30th, Taloriko knocked off the campaign trail by flu with 34 days to go. So you're telling me he's still not back. He has been gone from basically two weeks, not for nothing. After that string of videos exposing him as an absolute loony tune, who's so crazy and far left that even his own crazy far left pastor thinks that he's crazy far left. That's absolutely correct. So yeah, at the Daily Wire, we have you, as you mentioned, we've obtained multiple undercover videos of Taloriko. Mostly, most of these videos we've obtained are at his church, his ministers at his church saying some pretty crazy things. And of course, it's relevant because James Taloriko, his entire brand is he is this pastor, good old Christian, Sunday school kid, and he has cloked himself into the into the Christian faith this entire campaign to sell him to Texas voters. And obviously, Texas is a very, you know, culturally conservative and Christian state. And if he wants to win, Texas, he has to win over Trump, Trump voters who have voted for President Trump and who are by nature conservative. And what we've seen in these videos is that James Taloriko, we already knew this, but these videos just confirmed it and caught it on tape that his views on Christianity are to put it mildly unconventional and to put it at worst, just pure blasphemy. You know, Reverend Babs Miller, she's the main star of these videos. She is a, you know, self-described lesbian chaplain at Saint Andrews Presbyterian Church in Austin. That is the same church where Taloriko attends, where he grew up in, where he was baptized, where he has delivered some of these very politically charged sermons. And in these videos, she basically says, nope, you know, we don't know if Jesus really existed. He didn't die to save our sins. He was maybe just social justice warrior, not the savior of the world, all of that. And then another video, she basically said, you know, Taloriko has been getting this national DNC advice from DC, basically telling him to lay off his trans messaging, his very rapidly pro-abortion messaging, because they know that's alienating. [BLANK_AUDIO] state like Texas. So since those videos dropped, they went viral on social media, kind of created this firestorm, a lot of conservative and even independent outlets picked them up. And yeah, you're right. The last time we saw James Halariko was on September 30th. He went to New York City for a very glitzy fundraiser with Robert DeNiro and some other, you know, A-Wister's in the Big Apple. And since he has been out, he did a virtual appearance on September 30th with the Hispanic Business Association, I believe. And since then, he's been out. We've heard very little from his campaign. They finally put out a public statement yesterday after the president last night in San Antonio just totally publicly assailed him and it went viral on social media again. And they basically says, yeah, he has the flu. He'll be back on the campaign trail soon, but they're not giving any specifics. And, you know, I've had the flu before Tim. I don't know about you, but it didn't take me 12 days. And, you know, he's young. He's 35. He's a young guy. I mean, he's relatively in shape, but I don't, you know, I don't know if he has stamina, but I just don't, people are wondering, why is it taking so long to recover from the flu? So a lot of speculation is going on on social media about what's really going on here. Yeah, I mean, to your point, I have definitely, and I sure you have. And most of our listeners have, you know, we've all gotten to, you have a couple of days where you're really laid up and then eventually you don't want to burn any more PTO or maybe you don't have any more to burn. And so you take some dayquil and you show up to the office. And that's just for regular work, right? That's just for like a regular Wednesday, not 20 days away from a potentially life-changing election. I wonder, before we talk more about the flu or maybe there's not more to say about the flu itself, but you know, I obviously, I'm not going to ask you to divulge how you're getting these undercover videos. It's right, the nature of undercover videos that we can't really talk about that. But as you're reporting these stories out, you're of course reaching out to the Taloriko campaign, you're reaching out to other folks for comment, you're discussing these stories. Are you getting any sense of kind of like not shock, but kind of like a, like a, how did we miss this reaction among Democrats? I guess what I'm trying to say is let me put it this way. James Taloriko, as you just said, is 35 years old, right? He's been a public figure in his community for a long time. Pretty much everything that any of us says is on the internet, right? Pretty much anything that any pastor or priest or rabbi says at any religious service at this point post-COVID is recorded either for posterity or to be streamed on a church's website, right? I mean, this is incredibly common. We see it all the time. How did they not, did they not think that this was all going to come out? Like, how is this, how was he not prepared for this? Right. Well, I think national Democrats, especially them in Texas. I think they probably just wanted to overlook it because of who he was running up against in that primary, which was representative Jasmine Crockett, who I think everyone outside of Texas agreed was would be a complete disaster on the ticket and would just be we to a Republican blowout. So I think they got, you know, it's funny. You know, we talked so much about identity politics and how the Democrats, you know, they lost 2024 in large part because of identity politics and now they're trying to get away from it. But in some cases, you can argue they're just they're doing it again, but in a different way. They think that if they just get a white quote unquote straight mail who looks relatively normal, who can talk about being a good old Christian, then that's enough. So I think a lot of democratic and like, especially in the consulting class, I think they think that as long as we we have, you know, we just have a normal white guy who's young and who doesn't have any big scandals and that will be good for us. So I think that is kind of the blind spot for them. But going back to the flu point because I do think there's more points to be made here, you know, Texas, this whole Biden baseman strategy, that is not that is not a tactic you employ in a red state like Texas, where you got to be sprinting across the finish line. If you want to win, even in a very democratic friend of the year, we saw this with Beto or work, you know, everyone thought he had the enthusiasm for him in 2018 and Ted Cruz, you know, was able to pull that out by a couple of points. So if Taloriko really wants to win, he really needs everything to break in his favor. And that includes a very strong on the ground game on the ground voting game where early voting is about to start in about one or two weeks or so. And, you know, with him being out in MIA, you know, that raises a lot of questions about, you know, not only his commitment, but his stamina and his ability to turn out the vote when early voting comes. You know, this is not a state again, where you can just take a back seat and hope all goes well to win. You need to be all hands on deck. And it's especially shocking because the, I mean, there are several criticisms that people have about Ken Paxson and several things that, you know, the kind of the media and consultant class are already pointing to, but the main one is that he is, he's a little low energy or that's the criticism, right? I mean, the president Trump has been needling him about this, right? He makes fun of him on stage of sure Ken Paxson appreciates. And you know, look, I mean, it's not, it's not, it's a little unfair, but Ken Paxson is a, you know, he's a serious guy. He's a thoughtful guy who's attorney general. He was the, you know, the head of the top law enforcement, you know, the, the, he was the law in Texas. You kind of want that guy to be a little bit more stoic and a little bit more stayed, but it's obviously a, that's, of course, a potential detriment on the campaign trail. So really, yeah, you had this young guy. He launched with that ad of him in the back of the truck. It seems like he's going to be out there. And really, it almost feels like it's his to lose in a certain way. And the two things that he can't do are leave Texas and leave the campaign trail. And he went to New York and then disappeared. Again, it's even, again, this is not a dig at Ken Paxson, but I mean, you know, Taloriko's got 30, 25, 30 years on. I don't know exactly how old Paxson is, but right off the bat, you know, it's not that Ken Paxson's old, certainly not by American political standards. But when you have him, when you're running against a much younger person, that's already immediately a major advantage in their column. It's always been that way, right? In American politics, before you even get to the substance. And Taloriko, just again, the only, he just needed to be out there looking young and spy. And he is nowhere to be found, which is very, very weird. Um, in the next, we have a few minutes left. Just, I want to kind of pivot just in midterms, generally back, we talked about sort of like the messaging from the party. Are there anything else? Any other races that you've been covering? Any other stories that you think are interesting that maybe are not getting as much, as much pickup or national media attention as the Taloriko Paxson race? Yeah, I think staying on the Senate level, I think, you know, I think a race that has gotten very little national coverage is Minnesota. The Senate race there between Republican Michelle Tafoya. She's the former NFL broadcaster against Lieutenant Governor Penny Flanagan. You know, Penny Flanagan is very far left out there transgender advocate. She's obviously served under the wall, the Tim Walsh administration during this explosive fraud scandal that we've seen. And fraud has really emerged as a very big issue in that state. And it's cutting across bipartisan lines. People are really upset about it. I know at the daily wire, we've done a ton of reporting on it and we've helped lead that charge. And, you know, if you look at all the public polling in that race, it's closer than some of the key battlegrounds, including Texas and North Carolina and Georgia and some of these other states. So, you know, some of people might just say, oh, it's Minnesota, it's a blue state. Penny Flanagan will win it. But, you know, I think there's a lot of there's a lot of miss dialogue that's not being captured in this race. There's a lot of on-the-ground anger towards Tim Walsh and his administration, Bradley Bay, handled the fraud. And, you know, and Michelle Tafoya, she's a star recruit. She's very likable. Her campaign ads are driving home the message. And she's doing everything she needs to do. She's been able to create a lot of distance between her and President Trump, who is also very unpopular in Minnesota. So, I think, you know, Michelle Tafoya, if a Republican can win in that state statewide, it's someone like her. And I think the Republican Party looks at that race and thinks they have a very decent shot. Maybe not flipping it, but becoming very close to doing it. Yeah, it's at such a great point. And I'm glad that you picked that one because I do think I almost don't want, like I don't want to give that race more national attention because I do think that it has been run very locally, like the way midterms usually are. And I do think that Michelle Tafoya is is really benefiting from that because she is. So, I mean, she's literally a TV star, right? That's not even a compliment. That's what she was. She was like, she's a sideline reporter. She's she's incredibly good at unlike, right? Her unlike Ken Paxton, where you're coming from a job in an industry that, you know, maybe you spend your entire career developing skills that make you less well suited for politics or behaviors you may have to unlearn. She was a sideline reporter. This is literally like what better practice for retail politics than doing what she had done for her entire career. So, it is I do think I agree with you that that is going to be a fascinating one after the fact regard. I think it's going to be a lot closer than people think and whether or not she pulls it off. I do think that's going to be one of the races that again in the we in the chattering classes in the come in the weeks after the election. We'll talk about. I also think New Hampshire, just because New Hampshire elections are always interesting. This is a super weird one with Johnson, who knew is probably the the perfect Republican nominee for New Hampshire, he's kind of a renegade. He's okay with breaking with Trump, but also staying with Trump. He's from the most popular political dynasty in that state. But then somehow Chris Papis seems to be absolutely whipping him in the polls. Yeah. Either way, regardless of what happens, it's going to be interesting. And we and our readers are going to know exactly what's happening as it's happening because we have people like you, Jacob Wheeler, out there on the ground. So thank you for this. Please stay on James Tolerico. Let us know if you ever comes back out from the basement. And thank you for joining us. We're on it. Thanks, Tim. Thanks for having me. Of course. This has been another episode of Behind the Story. Thank you guys as always for tuning in. Come back next week. We'll do it again. Bye-bye.