Democrat Texas U.S. Senate hopeful James Talarico visited a mosque as a teen in “solidarity” with the Muslim community the weekend after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, according to a resurfaced interview.

Speaking to Texas Monthly in January, the progressive candidate recalled the time his mother, who was “politically active and a loyal member of the Democratic Party,” took him to an Islamic worship center following the attacks that killed 2,977 victims. 

“The weekend after September 11, as the Muslim community became a target of vitriol and distrust, she took James, his sister Madeleine, and his two best friends to a local mosque—’a solidarity thing,’ Talarico said,” reporter Allegra Hobbs wrote. 

Talarico, who was 13 at the time of this post-9/11 visit to the mosque, did not recall anything in the interview that he may have done to mourn his fellow Americans who perished that day at the hands of radical jihadist terrorists. 

The Democrat is up against Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton (R) in the November general election for Sen. John Cornyn’s (R-TX) seat, and has repeatedly made a mockery of his claimed Christian faith at the behest of Islam. 

In one interview, Talarico described himself as a “Christian who hates Christianity”:

He later praised Islam for inspiring his beliefs, saying, “I’ve learned as much about my faith from Salman’s tradition, from the Islamic mystics, from poets like Rumi, as much as I have from Christian authors…”

Talarico’s church, St. Andrew’s Presbyterian in Austin, Texas, has partnered with the left-wing Muslim group Council on American and Islamic Relations (CAIR) and has hosted a yearly Muslim iftar dinner for Ramadan. 

Olivia Rondeau is a politics reporter for Breitbart News based in Washington, DC. Find her on X/Twitter and Instagram.