Democrat Senate candidate James Talarico is the subject of a controversy with a local news outlet following a decision to give a false explanation for why they were shut out of a local roundtable discussion on data centers.
Talarico held an apparent closed-door discussion with locals in Abilene, Texas, which is at the center of a massive 1,100-acre AI mega-project, on the topic. Local reporters were denied access by the Talarico campaign, while the hyper-progressive national cable network MSNOW was given exclusive access inside the room. The Talarico campaign claimed that the move was to encourage honesty through a private conversation.
The “private conversation” would not remain private for long, however. Just one week after hosting the discussion, the Talarico campaign would upload a 14-minute-long production to their YouTube channel that touts nearly 300,000 subscribers.
When asked by the Abilene Reporter News during a press conference following the roundtable why local outlets were restricted from attending an event that could have large ramifications for their community, Talarico responded with a fabrication.
“Well we wanted to have a time for press to be able to ask these questions of everyone who was here,” Talarico told reporters. “Obviously we wanted to make sure that folks can feel comfortable being honest without the need to be worried about cameras in the room. So we decided to split them, one into a private conversation so I could hear directly from residents and get their honest feedback, and then a time for us to talk publicly with reporters and folks across the community.”
To make matters worse for the Talarico campaign, reporters were immediately instructed to not veer from the topic of data centers following the question as Talarico laughed.
The Abilene Reporter News would later claim that reporters had observed cameras in the room of the roundtable discussion. Those cameras do not appear to belong solely to the Talarico campaign, however. An on-scene report from MS Now’s Chris Jansing contained footage from inside of the room.
The Talarico campaign barred local press from a roundtable on data centers to prevent cameras from interfering with a "private conversation."
The only problem is that they uploaded a 14-minute long video of the "private conversation" and MS NOW had cameras in the room. pic.twitter.com/wq0FT2Wbke
This is not the first time that Talarico has been accused of conspiring with the media or promoting false narratives. In February, just weeks before the Texas primaries, Talarico and left-wing media personality Stephen Colbert would claim that his guest appearance on the show was spiked by the FCC. In reality, Colbert’s show violated the “equal time” rule that requires networks to allow equal time for candidates in an election.
Earlier this month, the Talarico campaign released another video on their YouTube page that featured several “Republican” women who were found to have little to no affiliation to the Republican Party at all.
Talarico will face off against Republican Ken Paxton for the Texas Senate seat in the November midterm election.
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