The Incredibly, Unacceptably Weird James Talarico
Watching from next-door Louisiana, I’ll confess to a certain amount of heartbreak at the implosion of Jasmine Crockett in Texas’ U.S. Senate Democrat primary race.
We don’t give poor Jasmine the due amount of love and credit for the true treasure she is. There may not be a more perfect specimen for the entitled fraudulence the modern Democrat Party is built on, other than perhaps Ilhan Omar or Rashida Tlaib. But Tuesday night, following weeks and months of disqualifying statements cheered on by the “Yass, Queen” chorus among the Hard Left, Crockett’s political career ended with a thud.
As the votes were being counted and the seven-point loss to the pasty white James Talarico mounted, this was poor Jasmine:
Jasmine Crockett: Election fraud is real and of course it’s the Republicans doing it! pic.twitter.com/w2UdASrhwC
— LiberalDreams45 (Parody) (@LiberalDreams46) March 4, 2026
The race was called almost immediately after she left the podium.
It’s hard to imagine somebody so virtuous and brimming with character could be finding herself professionally nugatory, but then again:
Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-TX), who just lost her Democrat primary and is a lame duck, thumps her chest about her law degree.
Crockett got her degree from one of the worst law schools in the country.
She’s a DEI moron who nobody likes.
That’s why she lost.pic.twitter.com/fjc1IEsCcw
— Paul A. Szypula ???????? (@Bubblebathgirl) March 4, 2026
Gosh, we’ll miss her.
So the narrative on the right is now that with Talarico, who outspent Crockett something like $25 million to $5 million in order to win by seven points, as the Democrats’ nominee laying in wait for the survivor of the John Cornyn–Ken Paxton GOP primary runoff cage match, that Texas Senate seat is in real jeopardy.
I’m not here to tell you that’s impossible. Ted Cruz only beat Beto O’Rourke by a 51–48 margin in 2018, which was the last midterm cycle with a Republican in the White House and the GOP in control of both the House and Senate. I could argue that this cycle is a little different, an argument that would be substantially premature because we don’t know what the facts on the ground will be this fall.
Cruz had a lot of Trump voters miffed at him that year because of the bitterness of the 2016 GOP primary and his reticence to get on the Trump bandwagon. He’s recovered politically from that; when he ran for reelection in 2024, he beat Collin Allred by a comfortable 53–45 margin.
In both races a ghastly amount of money was spent against Cruz. It’s eminently predictable that the avalanche of out-of-state campaign money behind Talarico will dwarf anything Texas has ever seen. It’ll easily top $100 million.
And Cornyn and Paxton are both more vulnerable, at least arguably, than Cruz was in 2018.
For Cornyn, the problem is a lack of faith among base voters. He’s been in the Senate since 2002, making him one of those long-standing GOP senators whose record of legislative underperformance actually created the Trump phenomenon in the first place, and now he’s a leadership figure in the bosom of the grossly underperforming John Thune.
No GOP incumbent in a contested primary is likely to survive the failure of the Senate to pass the SAVE America Act, and the rumor in D.C. this week is that the GOP establishment has floated a deal to Trump that goes like this: He endorses Cornyn for reelection, and in return they’ll push the SAVE America Act through to his desk.
Of course, the current military operation against Iran, if it can turn over the Iranian regime, probably reaps a windfall for Republicans, taking Texas, and lots of other states, off the board. If it can’t, well…
Trump put out a statement on the race Wednesday:
The Republican Primary Race for the United States Senate in the Great State of Texas, a State I LOVE and won 3 times in Record Numbers (the HIGHEST vote ever recorded, by far!!!), cannot, for the good of the Party, and our Country, itself, be allowed to go on any longer. IT MUST STOP NOW! We have an easy to beat, Radical Left Opponent, and we have to TOTALLY FOCUS on putting him away, quickly and decisively! Both John and Ken ran great races, but not good enough. Now, this one, must be PERFECT! My Endorsements within the Republican Party have been virtually insurmountable! It is such an honor to realize and say that almost everyone I Endorse WINS, and wins by a lot, especially in Texas! I will be making my Endorsement soon, and will be asking the candidate that I don’t Endorse to immediately DROP OUT OF THE RACE! Is that fair? We must win in November!!! Thank you for your attention to this matter. President DONALD J. TRUMP
There are people parsing that statement to predict Cornyn will get the endorsement because Paxton can’t win. On that? Not so fast.
Remember, Paxton has been under continuous fire as Texas’ attorney general from both the Left and the “establishment” GOP for most of the last decade and he nevertheless keeps winning elections. In 2022, amid a cloud of accusations about corruption and abuse of power, he crushed George P. Bush by a 68–32 margin in the GOP primary runoff and then won reelection by a comfortable 53-44 margin.
This would be a tougher race than that one was, and for that reason you will hear lots of arguments that Cornyn must be the nominee because Paxton is too risky against Talarico.
Are those convincing?
Well, first, let’s understand that Cornyn, the incumbent, only managed 41.9 percent of the vote in the Republican primary Tuesday night (Paxton was just behind at 40.7 percent; Wesley Hunt came in third with 13.5 percent and several others got traces of votes). That’s a fairly poor showing for a four-term incumbent with unlimited resources and 100 percent name recognition, and it’s an indication Paxton probably has enough of a base vote to win convincingly if he turns it out. An incumbent needing to find more than eight percent of the undecideds is an incumbent the voters want to fire. This is not to say Cornyn can’t win — it is to say he’s got a heavy lift in front of him to get the nomination.
But will Paxton have too heavy a lift if he’s in a head-to-head with Talarico?
I could argue he’s no worse off than Cornyn. Cornyn, after all, could very well struggle to turn out Republican votes in the general election given how many of them turned out Tuesday to reject him.
At this point it’s probably a wash between the two as to electability, regardless of what Team Cornyn might have you believe.
And whether it’s Cornyn’s establishment-RINO brand or Paxton’s closet full of skeletons (there’s old dirt from those corruption allegations and fresher dirt from his recent divorce), either way the race might well turn on Talarico’s electability.
Which, despite what you will hear ad nauseam, is not all that great.
He’s been described as a more buttoned-down version of O’Rourke, which is to say he’s more boring than the outrageously fraudulent Beto was. But James Talarico is, to put it as succinctly as I can manage, a thoroughgoing nutbag.
Here’s one of the least offensive things he says. I’m including a full clip here, because what you’ve probably seen or heard is his statement that the border ought to be a welcome mat. It isn’t quite as terrible as that, as you’ll see:
It’s almost reasonable, right up to the point where Talarico spews out the tired “comprehensive immigration reform” line.
Nobody in Texas who isn’t a hardcore Democrat is fooled by that anymore. Trump proved by shutting down the border that the system wasn’t broken — it was the deliberate sabotage of the system by his predecessors that left the border wide open to an invasion by the Third World. And while he might not like the optics of ICE’s actions in Minnesota, he’s awfully out of touch with what’s happening locally in Texas.
Namely, that in San Antonio and Dallas, ICE officers literally came under fire from left-wing terrorists. ICE doesn’t have the problem of local jurisdictions failing to honor detainers for criminal aliens in that state that it does in some of the northern sanctuary cities.
But there’s far worse than his answers on immigration and the border. Here’s just a taste:
“Our trans community needs abortion care too…so when I use the word ‘woman’ it should not be understood as an exhaustive term, but rather as a lens through which to understand, examine and interrogate patriarchy.”
Texas Senate hopeful James Talarico preaching at his church. pic.twitter.com/Ss9R2tOzGM
— Protestia (@Protestia) March 4, 2026
Wait, what?
In Texas he says this?
And…
We must confront racism and misogyny everywhere — from the school house to the White House.
I’m proud to sign Rep. @GeneforTexas’s resolution condemning anti-Asian hate speech like “Kung Flu” and “China Virus.”
Words have consequences. Dehumanization always leads to violence.
— James Talarico (@jamestalarico) March 18, 2021
Gene Wu is a communist Texas state legislator who might well be the most active anti-white racist in American politics, as he proved recently.
There’s more…
I’m co-authoring legislation to explicitly teach “diversity, equity, and inclusion” in our schools.
I’ve also filed House Bill 4111 which would require school districts over a certain size to hire a Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Officer.
— James Talarico (@jamestalarico) March 18, 2021
Black Americans in a church.
Mexican Americans in a store.
Asian Americans in a spa.
Radicalized white men are the greatest domestic terrorist threat in our country.
— James Talarico (@jamestalarico) March 18, 2021
And after a Senegalese Muslim immigrant wearing an Iranian flag undershirt and a “Property of Allah” hoodie shot up a bar in Austin, here was Talarico:
America is praying for Austin.
But there is something profoundly cynical about asking God to solve a problem we’re not willing to solve ourselves.
God moves and works through us. God has no other hands but our hands.
We must act. pic.twitter.com/H2bbjjCZmz
— James Talarico (@jamestalarico) March 1, 2026
Yes, Texas, that’s Talarico coming for your guns to punish you because the radicalized Third World Islamist that Joe Biden naturalized decided to harvest a few infidels on a Saturday night on Seventh Street.
Oh — and America isn’t a Christian nation, says the gay Presbyterian preacher:
Boebert: The separation of church and state is not in the Constitution. We are a Christian nation@JamesTalarico: America is not a Christian nation. It is a nation where you are free to be a Christian — or any other faith, or no faith at all.
The religious right would probably… pic.twitter.com/wQo3TaJtwP
— Team Talarico (@TeamTalaricoHQ) February 21, 2026
This isn’t exactly the old-time religion:
.@JamesTalarico: For 50 years, the religious right convinced our fellow Christians that the most important issues were abortion and gay marriage—two issues that aren’t mentioned in the Bible.
Jesus tells us exactly how we’re going to be judged: by feeding the hungry, by healing… pic.twitter.com/FapsoUzZwB
— Team Talarico (@TeamTalaricoHQ) February 17, 2026
Is it controversial to say you probably won’t find God in this guy’s church?
I could go on and on, and over the course of this campaign I won’t be the only one rehashing the outright batty comments and stances Talarico has committed himself to.
They’re going to try to sell him as a “moderate,” which will seem plausible in comparison to poor Jasmine. But there is nothing moderate about Boring Beto Talarico.
If Trump thinks he has to endorse Cornyn to save that seat, then he’d better extract a treasure trove of considerations from Thune and the rest of the GOP caucus in the Senate, few of whom have earned reelection for their performance over the past year. Because fear of Talarico winning in Texas is, based on the sumptuous banquet of political delicacies his record presents, utterly irrational.
Ken Paxton can beat Talarico. So can Cornyn. The question isn’t who can win, it’s who can move the agenda forward.
READ MORE by Scott McKay:
Americans Are Skeptical of the Iran Strikes. That’s a Good Thing.
Ten Thoughts on Operation Epic Fury and Its Aftermath
Five Quick Things: John Thune Is Blowing It