President Donald Trump called for a debate between Texas’s Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton and Democratic state Rep. James Talarico in the state’s highly competitive Senate race.
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“Ladies and Gentlemen, upon information and belief, James TalaFREAKo, who is running for the United States Senate in Texas, is MISSING IN ACTION!” Trump wrote Wednesday night on Truth Social. “He should immediately report to a Debate Stage against Ken Paxton, who is ready, willing, and able.”
Talarico has been pulling back from campaigning since he said he tested positive for influenza last week. He appeared virtually at a candidate forum hosted by the United States Hispanic Business Council last week, where he appeared pale and sickly and sniffled his way through his answers. His campaign said he would be back on the trail this weekend.
Trump’s post followed his Wednesday visit to San Antonio where he rallied with Paxton. The Republican candidate has been hobbling through the race, with lackluster fundraising and a long history of personal and legal scandals casting a pall over his candidacy. National Republican groups have been pouring money to prop up his campaign, but polls continue to show Talarico either tied with or ahead of Paxton in a state that has been dominated by Republicans for three decades.
Talarico has already agreed to numerous debates. Paxton has either declined, claiming the hosts would be biased, or not responded to the invitations. Talarico offered to face Paxton in a debate hosted by Fox News — an invitation the network accepted — but Paxton did not respond. The 2000 contest was the last Texas Senate race with no general election debates.
“President Trump just said Ken Paxton should debate. I agree,” Talarico said in a statement. “Ball’s in your court, Ken.”
The Paxton campaign did not answer if he would debate Talarico and instead pointed to the Democrat’s absence from the trail.
“It’s … already day 12 of there being no sign of James Talarico, but the mainstream media would rather push fake news to try and attack me than report on his whereabouts,” Paxton said in a statement.
Republicans fear depressed turnout among their supporters in Texas could jeopardize their control of the Senate seat. Paxton emerged from a bruising primary where Senate Republicans and their allies spent more than $100 million defending incumbent Republican Sen. John Cornyn and cast Paxton as morally unfit for office.
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Trump has since tried bringing Republicans back into the fold.
“A vote for Talafreako is a vote to turn Texas into a dirty, failing, crime-ridden, third-world dumping ground,” Trump told attendees at Wednesday’s San Antonio rally. “A vote for Ken Paxton is a vote to save Texas and defend everything that makes Texas great.”
Trump hosted a midterm party convention in Dallas last month in part to boost support for Paxton.
But in a private conversation during a fundraiser that was leaked to the New York Times last week, Paxton said the convention instead hurt his standing.
Further leaks from the event revealed him saying the president’s policies, including the war in Iran and the high cost of fuel, were “dragging” his campaign and lamenting that his campaign was being run by party operatives in Washington.
The Texas Tribune on Thursday reported another clip from the event in which Paxton said cuts to mandatory spending — which includes social safety net programs such as Social Security, Medicaid and Medicare — would be necessary to rein in the federal deficit.
“Making some reasonable cuts to mandatory spending: you’re going to have to do it or there is no solution. That’s just the reality. We have to suck it up,” Paxton could be heard saying.
Cuts to Medicaid and other federal benefits in Republicans’ One Big Beautiful Bill have been one of Democrats’ biggest attack points against Republicans this year. Paxton, who has not disputed the authenticity of the recordings, said in a statement that he would protect Social Security, which he called a “sacred promise that seniors paid into, and they have earned every single dollar.” The statement did not name Medicare or Medicaid.
“The fake news keeps spinning the same cherry-picked audio to mislead Texans and take my words out of context,” Paxton said. “I have never said I would take away entitlements from those who deserve or earned them.”
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