Vice President JD Vance made the comments during an appearance in Tyler, Texas on Tuesday. Credit: Wikimedia Commons / Gage Skidmore

With the GOP facing increasingly dire straits in the midterms, Vice President JD Vance appeared to suggest during a stop in Tyler that James Talarico, the Democrat running for Texas’ contested U.S. Senate seat, is a pervert or pedophile.​

“You gotta wonder what the internet search history of a man like that looks like,” Vance said of Talarico, a former San Antonio schoolteacher and a Presbyterian seminarian. “Ladies and gentlemen, you don’t want to find out.”

Speaking to reporters at the airport after the rally, Vance doubled down on his remarks, citing Talarico’s progressive views on drag performances and transgender issues.

“Well, he’s just a guy that shows a weird focus on transgender kids and drag queens,” Vance said. “I think he said something to the effect of ‘an 11-year-old in drag was a very beautiful thing,’ and he says a lot of weird stuff. And I think, typically, people who say stuff like that tend to have some pretty unusual search histories.”

Even so, Vance admitted he was “just guessing.”

Vance’s remarks at the airport appear to reference a 2021 event Talarico attended that featured an 11-year-old performer named Kween Kee Kee. However, there’s no evidence Talarico ever made any specific statement about the child’s performance.​

At the Tyler airport, the vice president also suggested that Talarico is gay after a man yelled out, “I love you, Vance.”

“I love you too, sir — in a totally platonic way, to be clear,” Vance said. “I’m the Vice President, not James Talarico.”

For the record, Talarico is currently in a romantic relationship with a woman — his former chief of staff, Brianna Menard.  

Vance’s whirlwind disinformation campaign follows an attempt over the weekend by MAGA influencers to claim Talarico had taken time off the campaign because he’d been hospitalized in a mental health care facility in Ohio.

In reality, Talarico had been diagnosed with the flu and was recovering at home. Home security footage obtained by the New York Times appears to support the Democrat’s version of events.

The Lindner Center of Hope, the mental health facility where conspiracy theorists claimed Talarico was staying, also issued a statement saying he’d never received treatment there.

Early voting runs Oct. 19-30, and Election Day is Tuesday, Nov. 3.

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Michael Karlis is a multimedia journalist at the San Antonio Current, whose coverage in print and on social media focuses on local and state politics. He is a graduate of American University in Washington,...