Brianna Menard, the longtime girlfriend of left-wing Texas Senate candidate James Talarico, accused police of committing "genocide" against black Americans and shared a petition to free a convicted cop-killer, all during the summer of 2020, when cities burned and the Black Lives Matter movement dominated Democratic politics.
The since-deleted posts, unearthed in a Washington Free Beacon review of Menard's old X account, paint a picture of radical activism in the inner circle of a man now asking Texas voters, who backed President Donald Trump by double digits in 2024, to send him to the United States Senate.
Talarico's campaign did not respond to the Free Beacon's request for comment. Neither did Menard.
Five days after George Floyd's death, on May 30, 2020, nationally syndicated radio host Bobby Bones posted a measured criticism of the riots then spreading from Minneapolis. "My feeling now... I hate that the true message of inequality is being lost due to the actions of folks now," Bones wrote.
Menard fired back at him directly:
"Why aren't you speaking out about the murder of George Floyd? You are always so good about addressing tragedies on the show. Yet you remained silent this week. Why does the destruction of property warrant your response but the genocide of black people in our country does not?"
The word "genocide" does a lot of heavy lifting there. In 2019, thirteen unarmed black men were killed by police nationwide, according to a Washington Post database. Yet a 2021 Skeptic Research Center poll found that more than 22 percent of Americans who identified as "very liberal" estimated the number was at least 10,000. Menard's rhetoric fit neatly inside that wildly distorted perception, the kind of distortion that fueled the very riots Bones was criticizing.
Roughly two weeks after the "genocide" post, in June 2020, Menard shared a petition from Color of Change, a self-described "racial justice" organization that led efforts to defund police departments, calling for the release of Anthony Bottom, who went by the name "Jalil Muntaqim."
Bottom was no minor figure. A member of the Black Liberation Army militant group, he was convicted in 1975 of killing two New York City Police Department officers. He later pleaded no contest to conspiracy to commit manslaughter in connection with the killing of a San Francisco police officer.
The petition Menard shared described Bottom as a "widely respected elder" with "an exemplary record and a reputation as a peacemaker and teacher." It argued that "the Black lives of those who fought to protect Black communities from police brutality and murder should not be disregarded." In other words, the petition framed a man convicted of murdering police officers as someone who had "fought to protect Black communities."
Menard amplified that message to her followers without caveat.
This is not a case of a politician's distant acquaintance posting something embarrassing on social media. Menard served as Talarico's chief of staff in his Texas state representative office from January 2022 to January 2023. Talarico has said publicly that he and Menard have been together for four years, a timeline that means the pair began dating around the time she worked directly for him.
After leaving Talarico's office, Menard took the same chief-of-staff role for another Texas Democrat in the state legislature, Salman Bhojani. She now serves as director of TEXPAC, the political arm of the Texas Medical Association, which has publicly condemned Texas Republicans for opposing what it calls "evidence-based, gender-affirming care for transgender youth and adolescents," as the New York Post reported.
In her online bio for a local food co-op, Menard describes herself as a "committed vegan" who spends her time "dancing the night away at Cheer Up Charlies," an Austin-area gay bar, "or snuggling with my purrfect cat Zia."
Menard's posts do not exist in a vacuum. They reflect the same ideological current that has defined Talarico's own public career, and that he is now scrambling to distance himself from as he runs statewide in deep-red Texas.
Talarico once declared that "God is non-binary." Last week, he walked that back on CBS News, saying, "There are statements that I've made that I certainly regret." The retreat is convenient. The original statement was not made under duress or in a moment of confusion. It was a deliberate public declaration.
On policing, the parallels with Menard's views are hard to miss. In 2019, Talarico argued against placing police officers in schools, saying that "adding more law enforcement officials into campuses" amounts to "leaning into a culture of violence." When Fox News pressed on the remark, his campaign responded that "James opposes defunding the police and has a proven track record voting to send billions of dollars to support law enforcement."
That denial rings hollow when his own girlfriend was sharing defund-the-police petitions and accusing law enforcement of genocide, and when the organization behind the petition she shared, Color of Change, explicitly led the charge to defund police.
The anti-police posts were not the only revealing material on Menard's now-deleted X account. In June 2021, she mocked white Americans, or "wypipo," as she put it, for opposing critical race theory in schools. Responding to a Texas Public Policy Foundation post that urged parents to "stay on the lookout" for CRT terminology in local classrooms, Menard wrote:
"Yes I'll take 'phrases that make wypipo uncomfy' for $1000."
The post treated parental concern about ideological instruction as a punchline. It also revealed a casual willingness to use racially charged language, the kind of language that would end a Republican staffer's career in a news cycle.
Menard's account also featured lighter fare. In November 2020, she wrote, "Not me calling my trauma bond with Steve Kornacki a crush," referring to the NBC News political correspondent. A month later, she called Kornacki "my bf" with a heart emoji, while, by Talarico's own timeline, she was already in a relationship with the future Senate candidate.
Then there is the vegan question. In April 2022, Talarico, wearing a mask, announced he was "proud to say that our campaign has officially become a non-meat campaign" and would only buy "vegan products" because of "climate change." More recently, he has denied being a vegan himself, as USA Today reported. The pattern is familiar: take the far-left position when it's fashionable, then deny it when the electorate shifts.
Talarico is running for Senate in a state where law enforcement is respected, where the border crisis is not an abstraction, and where voters rejected the Democratic presidential nominee by a wide margin just last year. He is asking those voters to trust his judgment.
His closest personal and professional relationship is with a woman who accused police of genocide, promoted the release of a man convicted of killing cops, mocked parents who opposed CRT, and worked for an organization that has taken public positions against Republican efforts to protect children from irreversible medical procedures.
Talarico can walk back his "God is non-binary" comment. He can insist he supports police funding. He can deny being a vegan. But he cannot erase the record of the people he chose to surround himself with, or the worldview those choices reveal.
Voters in Texas didn't sign up for a Senate candidate whose inner circle treats cop-killers as political prisoners and policing as genocide. They shouldn't have to pretend otherwise.
