Texas Senate candidate James Talarico met with Fox News this week and walked back some of his most controversial lines. God is no longer “non-binary.” There are not six sexes. Biological males in girls’ sports are a problem if they threaten safety or fairness. He even said he would support a national ban on gender surgeries for minors.
On Morning Joe, Talarico’s revisionism was treated as a master class. Joe Scarborough and the panel did not cast the new positions as cynical conversions under campaign pressure. They treated them as a template.
Scarborough walked through the Fox exchange and then gave the party its homework. “That’s all you have to — it’s really, I’ve done this before. It’s really not that hard. Whatever they say to you, you turn it to costs that Americans are feeling every day.” Joe never misses a chance to remind people that, in the previous century, he was a congressman.
On the minors-surgery ban he made the assignment explicit: “Look, cut, paste, use in your campaign, and actually move forward with those policies, and you won’t be with the five percent, you’ll be with the ninety-five percent.”
Jonathan Lemire supplied the compliment. Talarico is “particularly skilled at this,” he said. “We’re seeing raw political skills here out of Talarico.”
Even Morning Joe’s chyron [see screencap] pitched in: Talarico “clarifies” his positions. Clarifies, my . . . eye.
The candidate who once told the Texas House that “God is both masculine and feminine and everything in between” was recast as the model of how Democrats should talk in a red state.
Across the dial, on CNN This Morning, host Audie Cornish was not buying the rebrand so easily. Here’s how she teased the segment:
“Texas Senate candidate James Talarico flip-flops on transgender athletes in sports. We’re gonna ask whether the voters can believe what he’s saying now.”
Ouch. And Audie wasn’t done:
“James Talarico has flipped his stance on transgender kids in sports.”
“James Talarico, doing a bit of a flip flop when it comes to transgender issues.”
And responding to Talarico’s claim in the Fox interview that his supposed clarification of the “God is non-binary” line was not “controversial theologically,” Cornish shot back: “Except it’s Texas.”
Read Full Article: https://newsbusters.org/blogs/nb/mark-finkelstein/2026/09/10/morning-joe-praises-talaricos-culture-issue-flip-flops-cnn
