Jesse Watters Just Asked the Question Every Texan Is Thinking About James Talarico’s Secret Girlfriend

Ken Paxton crushed John Cornyn in the Texas Senate primary Tuesday night.

Now Democrats have a problem – and his name is James Talarico.

Jesse Watters just put the entire country on notice that this race is going to be one for the ages.

The Girlfriend Nobody Has Ever Seen

Talarico is 37 years old, unmarried, and running for the United States Senate. That alone raises eyebrows in Texas.

Then he went on a podcast and announced he has a girlfriend.

They have been together four years, he said. She is his best friend. She is his rock.

Nobody has ever seen her.

"What I'm trying to do is protect her and my family and my friends from the impacts of this race," Talarico explained on the Jamie Kern Lima podcast. "I signed up to run for the U.S. Senate; obviously, they did not."

Watters heard that explanation on The Five Wednesday and had exactly one question.

"Does she exist?"

He kept going. "If the campaign has only been going on for less than a year, and they have been dating for four years, why haven't we ever seen this woman before?"

Co-host Greg Gutfeld supplied the obvious punchline: "Does she live in Canada?"

Talarico's campaign eventually filled in one detail – she worked as the Chief of Staff in his Texas House office when the relationship started, four years ago. Her name stays off the record at the campaign's insistence.

Four years together. Former staffer. Zero public appearances. The campaign asking journalists not to publish her name.

Watters was not buying it. "If he wins, are they going to have a coming out party? Or is she still going to stay the secret girlfriend?"

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The Vegan the Democrats Want Texas to Elect

This is the Democratic Party's best shot at a Texas Senate seat in decades – and their candidate is fighting allegations that he is a secret vegan while his campaign hides his girlfriend from the public.

Trump called Talarico "weird" last week. Paxton called him the most extreme Democrat ever nominated in Texas.

Neither of those attacks landed as hard as Watters landing the Canada joke.

Talarico has gone to extraordinary lengths to prove he is not a vegan. His campaign posted a photo of him eating a turkey leg at the Texas State Fair. He showed up at barbecue joints across the state. "I've been eating barbecue since before Ken Paxton's first indictment," he told one left-wing podcast.

The more he denies it, the more Texas Republicans talk about it.

Megyn Kelly put it plainly: "You don't go to Texas and say 'I'm a vegan' in the same way you don't go to Iowa, as a politician, and say 'I don't eat corn.'"

Because in Texas, authenticity is everything. Voters in this state can smell a candidate performing toughness instead of living it – and Talarico's entire campaign has become that performance.

He taught middle school, earned a theology degree, and told the Texas legislature on the record that six biological sexes exist.

Now he is eating turkey legs at state fairs and keeping his girlfriend's name a secret.

The Left Keeps Sending Texas the Same Candidate and Expecting a Different Result

Some Republicans estimate it will cost $250 million to hold the Texas Senate seat after Trump's Paxton endorsement rattled the party establishment. That number tells you everything about how worried they are.

But Ken Paxton has been surviving scandals for a decade. Criminal indictments. Whistleblower allegations. An impeachment by the Texas House. His own wife filing for divorce on "biblical grounds." He walked away from all of it.

The last time a Democrat won a statewide race in Texas was 1994. Every few years the left convinces itself the state is finally turning blue – then Texas conservatives show up and remind them it isn't.

Talarico's campaign knows the vegan attacks are working because they cannot stop responding to them. Every turkey leg photo, every barbecue quote, every "I categorically deny all accusations of veganism" soundbite is an admission that the attack landed.

That is not how winners campaign in Texas.

Democrats bet their best chance in a generation on a candidate who is now explaining to voters that his girlfriend is real, that he eats meat, and that six biological sexes was just a comment he made once.

You already knew this race was going to end the same way the last dozen Texas Senate races ended. Now you have the receipts.

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Sources:

• Willa Pope Robbins, "Jesse Watters Mocks James Talarico's 'Totally Not Fake Girlfriend': 'Does She Exist?'" Mediaite, May 27, 2026.
• Thomas Beaumont and Jesse Bedayn, "Talarico Targets Paxton's Scandals in Texas Senate Race," Associated Press via ABC News, May 28, 2026.
• "Ken Paxton Beats John Cornyn – and Blows a $250 Million Hole in Trump's Senate Map," Time, May 26, 2026.
• "Jesse Watters Bullies James Talarico for 'Secret' Girlfriend," The Wrap, May 27, 2026.
• "Here's What Dem Senate Candidate James Talarico Has Actually Said About Running a 'Vegan' Campaign," Megyn Kelly, May 27, 2026.