Democratic state Rep. James Talarico today described campaign ads featuring AI-generated videos of him as “lies” and claimed that voters are “fed up” with them, just a day after his rival in the Texas Senate race shared a deepfake video of him.
“They are lying about a candidate in this race, and so I think Texans are fed up with these kinds of lies in our politics,” Talarico said during an interview with NBC News in Dallas. “They want elected leaders who will be honest with them about their record and what they’ll do for the people of Texas, and so these AI deepfake ads don’t contribute anything to our civic discourse.”
In a video released by state Attorney General Ken Paxton’s campaign yesterday, which The Texas Tribune reported will air on Newsmax this week, Talarico is shown writing with a crayon in a “King James Talarico” bible while audio clips of various comments he has made about gender and feminism are spliced together without context.
This isn’t the first instance of Republicans using deepfake videos of Talarico. In March, shortly after he secured the Democratic nomination for the Senate, the National Republican Senatorial Committee shared a video featuring an AI-generated Talarico reading excerpts from his previous posts on X.
At that time, a spokesperson for Talarico told CNN that Republicans were “scared” of him. “While they spend their time making deepfake AI videos to mislead Texans, we are uniting the people of Texas to win in November,” the spokesperson said.
During today’s interview, which took place after he hosted an event countering the GOP’s midterm convention in Dallas, Talarico also talked about some old remarks he made back in 2020 where he called capitalism an “oppressive system.”
“I’ve missed the mark on statements that I’ve made in the past. I’ll be the first to admit that,” he said. “What I was discussing when you listened to my entire comments was not capitalism itself but crony capitalism, which is what we have today.”
He specifically pointed out the Republican candidates and donors gathering this week in Texas to push their policy agenda ahead of the midterms. He stated, “The only people who succeed in this economy are those who can pay for politicians, like the megadonors who are at that convention center across the street, and that’s what we need to dismantle.”
Talarico also discussed Democrats’ long-term efforts to win a statewide position in Texas and addressed hopes from party members that he could be someone to help “turn Texas blue” come November.
“I’m actually not interested in turning Texas blue. I know my party wants to turn Texas blue. The Republican Party wants to keep Texas red. I believe purple is actually the best color for Texas,” he said. “When elections are competitive, it makes every politician at every level stay alert and compete to serve the state’s people within reasonable limits. Right now, one-party rule leads to extremism and corruption no matter where you look.”
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