Rep. Brandon Gill (R-TX) used an appearance on Fox News Channel’s “The Ingraham Angle” Monday to accuse Texas Democratic U.S. Senate nominee James Talarico of softening his public image through campaign ads that lean on football and faith themes to appeal to Texas voters.
Gill argued that voters see through the strategy. “[Y]ou know, I think that’s the kind of stuff that Texas voters see in James Talarico,” Gill said. “You know, whenever they watch commercials like James Talarico trying to play into the Friday night lights feel, I think that’s what Texas voters dislike the most, because they realize that this is a guy who will take, and has taken, your most cherished traditions, your most cherished beliefs, your love for Friday night football, small town traditions, your faith, and wears them like a skin suit and then promotes policies that undermine everything that you know and love.”
Gill went on to list policy positions he attributed to Talarico, including support for “flooding American communities with illegal aliens,” backing a party he said wants to “give welfare to illegal aliens,” and promoting “ideas about how the Bible is pro-abortion or God is non-binary.”
“I think most Texans see what James Talarico, how he’s trying to portray himself and what he actually believes, and realizes these are two very different Talaricos and they’re very off-put by it,” Gill said.
Host Laura Ingraham pushed back gently on the football angle, noting that someone can be a fan without having played the sport. “That’s most people, right? Say, he wasn’t on the football team in high school,” Ingraham said, adding that Talarico “was a prominent team player, Congressman, on the debate team,” a trait she noted he shares with Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX). Ingraham then turned to broader cultural commentary, saying the left “would ban football” if it could and that pregame prayer in particular “puts people over the edge.”
Gill agreed and extended the critique to Talarico’s past statements. “If James Talarico went to a football game, he’d have to first apologize for his masculinity and the masculinity of everybody in the football stadium, and then he’d turn around and apologize for his whiteness, in his own words, as he’s done in the past,” Gill said. He added that he believes Talarico would find pregame prayer “very, very repellent.”
Gill closed by accusing Talarico of distorting religious teaching for political ends. “This is somebody who takes scripture and contorts it, and does it in a way that I think is offensive to almost every Bible-believing Christian, whether it’s his views on turning federal buildings into abortion clinics, or God being non-binary, or there being six different sexes, whatever those are,” Gill said. “This is somebody who rejects the Christian worldview.”
The exchange comes as Talarico seeks to position himself to a statewide Texas electorate ahead of the U.S. Senate race, with Gill’s remarks reflecting one line of Republican attack against him.
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