Democratic state Rep. James Talarico today characterized campaign ads using AI-generated videos of him as “lies” and asserted that voters are “fed up” with them, one day after his opponent in Texas’ Senate race posted a deepfake video of him.
“They are lying about a candidate in this race, and so I think Texans are fed up with these kind of lies in our politics,” Talarico said in an interview with NBC News in Dallas. “They want elected leaders who are going to shoot straight with them about their record and about what they’re going to do for the people of Texas, and so these AI deepfake ads don’t add anything to our civic discourse.”
In a video state Attorney General Ken Paxton’s campaign released yesterday, which The Texas Tribune reported will air on Newsmax this week, Talarico is depicted writing with a crayon in a “King James Talarico” bible with audio clips of separate remarks he has made in the past about gender and feminism but spliced together without context.
It’s not the first time Republicans have posted deepfake videos of Talarico. In March, shortly after he won the Democratic nomination for the Senate, the National Republican Senatorial Committee posted a video of an AI-generated Talarico reading excerpts of previous posts of his on X.
At the 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.
In today’s interview, which came after he hosted an event counterprogramming the GOP’s midterm convention in Dallas, Talarico also addressed recently resurfaced remarks he made in 2020 calling 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 talking about when you listened to my entire comments was not capitalism, but crony capitalism, which is what we have today.”
He pointed specifically to the Republican candidates and donors gathering this week in Texas to promote their policy agenda ahead of the midterms, saying, “The only people who succeed in this economy are those who can pay for politicians, like the megadonors who are in that convention center across the street, and that’s what we have to dismantle.”
Talarico also spoke about Democrats’ yearslong efforts to win a statewide contest in Texas, addressing hopes from members of his party that he could be the one to “turn Texas blue” in 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 think the best color for Texas is purple,” he said. “When you have competitive elections, it forces every politician at every level to stay on their toes and compete to serve the people of the state and to operate within the 40-yard lines. Right now, one-party rule leads to extremism and corruption, no matter what state.”
Leave a Reply