Thursday on MS NOW’s “The Briefing,” Texas U.S. Senate candidate James Talarico (D) said both his opponent, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, and Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) were in no position to tell anybody what a real man is.

Host Jen Psaki said, “Ted Cruz basically said he wouldn’t use the word masculine to describe you. It seems pretty clear what they’re trying to do here, at least to me. Not only are you they going after you, but they’re really trying to attack groups of people you’ve defended in the past and including trans people and others. What do you make of that?”

Talarico said, “Yeah, there’s been a lot of talk in this race about what it means to be a real man. And recently on the campaign trail, I told the story of my adoptive dad, the man who gave me his last name, the man who raised me as his own. Every Saturday morning, Mark Talarico would mow our lawn, whether it was rain or shine, whether he wanted to or not. He insisted on mowing our lawn himself. And then, without anyone asking him to, he would go next door and mow our neighbor’s lawn. Because our neighbor was elderly. She was a widow, and my dad never talked about it. He just did it because that’s what a man does. A man takes responsibility. A man upholds his commitments to his family and his neighbors. A man does what’s right even when no one is watching.”

He added, “And here’s what real men don’t do. They don’t lie and cheat their way through life. They don’t sell their soul to the highest bidder. They don’t steal from other people in order to enrich themselves. And so I’ve said before, and I will keep saying that real men serve others. Weak men serve themselves. And so I welcome this debate about what it means to be a man. And I don’t think Ken Paxton or Ted Cruz are in a position to tell anybody what a real man is.”

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