Bluesky

As a trillionaire, Elon Musk has his finger in many pies, including electric cars, rockets, and satellites. But he seems to have a special passion for his social media outlet X.com (formerly known as Twitter). Musk can be found on X at all hours of the day, often promoting far-right figures such as racist British provocateur Tommy Robinson. On Sunday, Musk was up to his usual X antics, repeatedly pushing a false story that James Talarico, the Texas Democratic Senate nominee, was absent from the campaign trail because he had suffered a mental breakdown and was receiving counselling at the Lindner Center of Hope, a mental health center in Ohio.

Musk has more than a passing interest in the Texas Senate race. He has residences and major business interests in the state, and on Monday, The New York Times revealed that he had given at least $10 million to a Texas Super PAC trying to elect Talarico’s Republican opponent, Ken Paxton—as well as a whopping $158 million to the Senate Leadership Fund, a PAC supporting all GOP Senate candidates. (In total, the Times reported, Musk has funneled $276 million into the 2026 election cycle, making him what the paper called “by far the largest known donor in the midterms.”)  

In truth, Talarico was recovering from the flu. But his convalescence led to a proliferation of conspiracy theories on the right. On Sunday, right-wing influencer Nick Sortor tweeted, “Ohio mental hospital CONFIRMS James Talarico was discharged from the facility earlier this week.” Sortor’s “confirmation” was a brief 45-second audio clip from another MAGA social media personality, Rhein Amacher, purporting to show an employee of the Linder Center of Hope saying that Talarico had just been discharged. 

Sortor presented the audio as a smoking gun that should end Talarico’s political career. Musk then amplified Sortor’s post and claimed, “The Talarico campaign is hiding something big that voters ought to know about.” The story was echoed far and wide by other right-wing influencers on X.com, notably by John Solomon (a former reporter for the Wall Street Journal who was fired for a conflict of interest) and Laura Loomer (a deranged provocateur who often influences President Donald Trump). 

But it only took a few hours for this bombshell to explode in the face of those who promoted it. First came a categorical denial by the Lindner Center: “Representative James Talarico has never received treatment from Lindner Center of Hope.”

Even more damaging was a thorough debunking of the story by Will Sommer and Andrew Egger in The Bulwark: 

For starters, there was the issue of logic. If Talarico had actually had a mental breakdown, why would he go to Ohio for treatment and not, say, anywhere in his home state? Why wouldn’t he simply have someone come to him?

Then there was the timeline. Amacher said repeatedly on X that he had placed the calls in question on Saturday evening. But Talarico couldn’t have been discharged from a facility in Ohio—mental health or otherwise—on Saturday evening. He’d already returned to the campaign trail to attend the Austin City Limits music festival on Friday, and attended a Kacey Musgraves concert one day later.

Sommer and Egger also acquired the full audio of the conversation between Amacher and the employee at the Linder Center of Hope (the audio can be found here). In that clip, the employee repeatedly says that Talarico is not a patient. At one point she says, “I do not find anyone with that name for the last four days that’s been discharged and they’re not here in the building.” Amacher keeps badgering her on this question till she suggests that maybe he was “just discharged this evening.” Listening to the audio in full, it becomes clear that the employee was flustered from a long conversation where she kept getting asked the same question, which she decided to end with a hypothetical response. Given that Amacher had falsely represented himself as a cousin of Talarico, the employee’s desire to provide some answer makes sense. 

Sommer and Egger plausibly suggest that Amacher might be in legal trouble since his own audio suggests he lied to receive confidential medical information. Both Amacher and Sortor are also vulnerable to a defamation suit. 

In the wake of the debunking of this smear job, some right-wing influencers, notably Caroline Wren and Benny Johnson, have deleted tweets promoting the story. Others, such as Megyn Kelly, have made pathetic attempts to pick holes in the Lindner Center of Hope’s categorical statement. 

The mudslinging is unlikely to hurt James Talarico, who continues to maintain a polling lead over Paxton. In fact, the sheer desperation of the right to defame him offers proof of how frightened Republicans are that he could become the first Democrat to win a Texas Senate seat since 1988.