Texas Democrat Talarico walks back 'six sexes' claim in Fox News reversal

Texas Democratic Senate nominee James Talarico now says "there are not six sexes", a direct reversal of his own prior claim, delivered on Fox News in what he called his first general-election interview.

Talarico appeared on The Story with Martha MacCallum and conceded he had botched the science he once tried to cite. The admission came unprompted in the broader flow of the interview, and it was blunt enough to raise a question every Texas voter deserves answered: if the candidate got something that basic wrong, and said it with confidence, what else has he been wrong about?

The Washington Examiner reported that Talarico told MacCallum he would own the error openly.

"I've missed the mark on some of my past statements. I will be the first to admit it."

He then tried to reframe what he had originally meant.

"What I meant is that there are two sexes, and then there's a small percentage of people with genetic abnormalities. I obviously didn't say it correctly."

And then the flat correction: "There are not six sexes. There are two." Five words that contradict the position he had previously staked out in public.

A general-election pivot, not a change of heart

Fox News described the sit-down as Talarico's first interview of the general election. That timing matters. Primary candidates talk to their base. General-election candidates talk to everyone, and suddenly, a claim that may have played well with progressive activists became a liability in front of a statewide Texas audience.

Talarico did not explain when or where he originally made the six-sexes assertion. He offered no specific scientific citation for the "genetic abnormalities" he referenced. He simply said he got it wrong and moved on.

The pattern is familiar. A Democrat running in a state that leans right discovers, somewhere between the primary and the general, that the positions popular on social media do not sell in diners and church parking lots. The reversal is not a sign of intellectual honesty. It is a sign of a campaign that ran the numbers.

Talarico is hardly the first candidate to attempt this kind of mid-race recalibration. His own prior rhetoric on gender policy drew national attention for its combative tone, and now he is working to sand down those edges before November.

Saying the quiet part loud, then unsaying it

What makes the walkback notable is not just the substance but the confidence with which the original claim was apparently delivered. Talarico did not describe his earlier statement as a slip of the tongue or a misquote. He said he "missed the mark", language that suggests he believed the claim at the time and chose to say it.

That distinction matters for voters trying to evaluate a candidate's judgment. A misspoken word is one thing. A considered public assertion that human beings come in six biological sexes is another. It reflects either a misunderstanding of basic biology or a willingness to parrot activist talking points without checking them first. Neither inspires confidence in a would-be senator.

Senate races across the country have produced similar moments of candidates scrambling to reconcile primary-season rhetoric with general-election reality. In Louisiana, a recent runoff reshaped the state's Senate delegation entirely, a reminder that voters reward clarity and punish evasion.

In Michigan, another Senate hopeful landed in hot water after making provocative statements on Fox News that clashed with mainstream voter expectations, a controversy that drew fierce conservative pushback and showed how quickly an on-air misstep can define a campaign.

Two sexes is not a concession, it is the baseline

Talarico framed his correction as a moment of candor. But acknowledging that there are two biological sexes is not brave. It is the starting line of any serious conversation about human biology. Presenting it as a personal growth moment only highlights how far outside the mainstream the original claim was.

Martha MacCallum's specific follow-up questions, if any, were not captured in the available portion of the interview. Whether she pressed Talarico on when he first made the six-sexes claim, or whether any policy positions flowed from it, remains unclear.

What is clear is that Talarico chose Fox News, not a friendly progressive outlet, to make the retraction. That is a tactical decision aimed at reaching the voters most likely to hold the original claim against him. It is also an implicit admission that the claim was politically damaging enough to require a public correction on hostile ground.

Even unusual political alliances have emerged this cycle. John Fetterman's surprising refusal to campaign against a Republican ally showed that some Democrats will break from party orthodoxy when the political math demands it. Talarico's reversal fits a similar mold, not principle, but calculation.

Texas voters will decide whether a candidate who confidently asserted something false, then walked it back once the election math changed, deserves a promotion to the United States Senate. The answer should not require much debate.