Morning Joe Hails Talarico, Ignores His Church’s Talk of Wishing Trump Assassinated

Mark Finkelstein
September 9th, 2026 7:01 PM

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James Talarico Morning Joe 9-9-26

Morning Joe spent Wednesday selling Democratic Senate Nominee James Talarico (TX) as the man who bats away dumb questions. However, nobody asked the one question that mattered: how does Talarico respond when two pastors at his own church say people in the pews were disappointed that Donald Trump survived two separate assassination attempts? 

Willie Geist praised the Texas Democrat for handling “dumb nickname questions better than anyone I’ve seen do it.” Joe Scarborough piled on: Talarico is “moving people,” while Ken Paxton may be “the worst politician” on a national level, “indicted by his own party.” 

They had time for the GOP’s first midterm convention in Dallas. They had time to notice that NBC’s season-opening Seahawks-Patriots rematch of last February’s Super Bowl will air opposite the convention. Scarborough mocked: “beta males watching the Republican convention and alpha males watching the football.”

 

 

They did not have time for Rev. Babs Miller or Senior Pastor Jim Rigby. 

In a video Townhall posted Tuesday, Miller, Minister to the Parish at St. Andrew’s Presbyterian in Austin, the church Talarico has belonged to since he was two, said: 

“We still have people in this church who wish that the young man had not just nicked his ear, but had been more successful.” 

 

 

While she did not expressly say the wish was hers, Pastor Babs described a completed assassination as “successful.” 

Same church, same pattern. On April 26, the morning after Cole Tomas Allen charged the magnetometer at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner with a shotgun, a handgun, and knives — and fired toward the stairs to the ballroom where the president sat — senior pastor Jim Rigby addressed his flock. Rigby is the man Talarico calls a mentor. He baptized him. He married his parents. Video here.

“There was an assassination attempt. And I know a lot of people have mixed feelings.” 

There was laughter in the congregation.

 

 

Then came Rigby's hedge: violence would not “get rid of the problem that we have.” 

Talarico was not in church that Sunday. He put out a generic statement thanking God that the president and vice president were safe and calling political violence “unacceptable in every form.” He did not address Rigby’s wording or the congregation's laugh. 

When John Cornyn demanded a condemnation, a campaign spokesman would not even say whether Talarico would keep attending St. Andrew’s.

He definitely kept the pastor. In a June 1 New York Times profile, i.e., after the "mixed feelings" line, he still called Rigby “my pastor in every sense of the word. Not that we agree on everything.” On June 20, Talarico sat with Eugene Daniels on MS NOW's The Weekend and treated criticism of his church as a smear. Republicans were “attacking my church and my pastor,” he said. 

The questions are not complicated. Why remain in a church where one pastor said people there hoped the Butler assassination attempt had been “successful,” and where the congregation laughed when another pastor said “a lot of people have mixed feelings” about the Correspondents’ Dinner attempt having failed? 

Will he disassociate from Miller and Rigby and that church, or is that the Christianity he is selling? 

Friday is the 25th anniversary of September 11. Jeremiah Wright, the Chicago pastor who married Barack and Michelle Obama, baptized their children, and in whose church Obama sat for two decades, infamously preached that the attacks were America’s “chickens coming home to roost.” Obama eventually had to cut him loose. 

Imagine Paxton’s pastor telling a congregation that members wished a Democratic president had been murdered in a Pennsylvania field, then granting “mixed feelings” the morning after a gunman fired at a dinner with the president in attendance. Geist would not be talking nicknames. 

Morning Joe will tell you Talarico is gifted at deflection. On the evidence of Wednesday’s show, so is Morning Joe. 

Here's the transcript. Click "expand" to read:

MS NOW 
Morning Joe 
9/9/26 
6:17 am EDT 

MIKA BRZEZINSKI: Back to Texas tonight. 

JOE SCARBOROUGH: Oh, let's go back to Texas. 

BRZEZINSKI: Well, they could also, in their platform on health care, talk about how they don't want people to get vaccinated. That's a good one, too. This is gonna be a fun night in Dalla. 

SCARBOROUGH: It's really crazy. The opening song: I, I got the program: All My Betas are in Texas? Really: they're going there! No really, they're going there. And then we get, this was so funny, they're all, like, attacking Talarico [inaudible] beta. You know, whatever. He's a talented guy, Talarico. 

He's running against maybe the worst politician. Have you ever seen a worse politician -- 

WILLIE GEIST: No. 

SCARBOROUGH: -- on a national level? Indicted by his own party, Ken Paxton. but Talarico, Talarico, he's, he's moving people. I think Republicans have a real blind spot there. It's gonna be a close race, Texas, again, usually fools gold for Democrats. We'll see if this year's different. 

GEIST: We should say, Talarico handles the dumb nickname questions better than anyone I've seen do it. Maybe the President Obama or some others, but the way he just completely deflects and said dumb nicknames -- 

BRZEZINSKI: Low-T 

GEISTL -- aren't gonna bring healthcare, aren't gonna lower prices, all that stuff. 

. . . 

BRZEZINSKI: President Trump is set to deliver the keynote speech and closing remarks tonight at the first-of-its-kind Republican midterm convention in Dallas. 

SCARBOROUGH: Dun-dun-dun-dah [hums NBC football fanfare.] 

BRZEZINSKI: The two-day event is part of an effort to mobilize voters for November's elections that will decide if the GOP stays in control of Congress. 

BRZEZINSKI: Thank you for the music. Night One is expected to highlight Republican policies. 

SCARBOROUGH: Whose playing tonight? 

JONATHAN LEMIRE: Patriots! 

SCARBOROUGH: Oh, it's Patriots and the Seahawks 

GEIST: Rematch. 

SCARBOROUGH: Oh my God, this is a rematch of the Super Bowl in prime time. This is a great -- 

GEIST: Mike Tirico on the call. 

SCARBOROUGH: Mike Tirico. 

LEMIRE: [Facetiously] No one's gonna watch the NFL. 

SCARBOROUGH: Well, you know, so what you're gonna have here is beta males watching the Republican convention, and alpha males watching the football. 

BRZEZINSKI: Wait, this is like an oxymoron or something. 

SCARBOROUGH: A lot, a lot of beta males participating. 

BRZEZINSKI: They're gonna be talking about -- 


SCARBOROUGH: We're gonna be watching. 

BRZEZINSKI: Oh, yeah. 

SCARBOROUGH: Dun dun dun dun. 

GEIST: Football, it's America. 

SCARBOROUGH: Oh my God. 

BRZEZINSKI: So how did you lose your health care?

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