We were told by all the best people — including James Talarico, who is running for the U.S. Senate in Texas — that somehow Karmelo Anthony was a victim.
Karmelo Anthony, you’ll recall, was the teenager who murdered Austin Metcalf in a tent while it was raining before a track meet. Anthony wasn’t supposed to be in that tent. Austin Metcalf and others told him to leave because he wasn’t from the school, and he decided that would be a great time to pull a knife out of his backpack and stab Austin Metcalf to death.
And then he was convicted of murder.
James Talarico then went on “The Breakfast Club” with Charlamagne tha God and explained that the Karmelo Anthony conviction was because of American racism. He stated:
I’ve done a lot of work in the state House on justice reform, and right now we’ve got a system that doesn’t serve all Americans equally. And we know that black Texans have not gotten the justice they deserve, in many cases. And, you know, I’m not an expert on this particular case, but I know that there were no black members of the jury. And to me, that’s the only evidence you need to really prove that this system is not working for black Texans.
Talarico says there weren’t any black Texans on the jury, and therefore Karmelo Anthony was victimized.
This ties into a broader perspective in American life, which is that black people are routinely being victimized by “the system.” Sandra Bullock, who has adopted black teenagers, was out there saying the same thing.
She said on the “Today” show:
I mean, you know … I have to see everything through her eyes and I’m uber paranoid. And they will tell you I’m like, they’re like, “Mom, it’s going to be fine.” I’m like, not fine. It’s not fine outside. But you know, I’m now learning to trust them because if I’ve done an okay job, even if I’ve just done an okay job, where they are now is extraordinary. …
The energy that is floating around our country and our world again, the color of their skin, they’re my babies, they’re my life. But no one knows that when they leave my house. And so that is always in the forefront of my mind. And I have to stop thinking about it so much because I think we’ve had all the conversations … they know.
She literally says her kids are telling her everything’s okay, and she, the white lady, is telling them, “No, no, no, no, honey, things are going to be really bad again.”
Look at the polling data in the United States when race relations started to turn the wrong way. Most Americans, black and white, thought race relations were moving in a positive direction until 2013-2014.
And then it all fell off a cliff. And now there are entire political structures built atop the lie that America is a deeply and horribly racist place, and an enormous amount of this relies on bad narratives and a bad set of facts.
We now have access to Anthony’s texts and videos of him, and it turns out that he was a person with extraordinarily violent thoughts.
According to the UK Daily Mail, “The material was never shown to jurors because a controversial gentleman’s agreement saw prosecutors and defense attorneys agree not to present negative evidence from either teenager’s background at trial. Apparently, there were comments by Austin Metcalf on his social media that would have reflected poorly on him to the jury.”
But that really isn’t the issue. The issue is the guy who stabbed him to death. According to the Daily Mail, “Anthony can be seen shirtless posing with a handgun in a screenshot from a video he recorded in November 2024, five months before the killing.”
Another image was taken on May 5, 2024. He’s seen holding an AK-47-style rifle while standing alongside three other teenagers. He was 16 at the time.
Now again, there are many teenagers across America who have pictures of themselves holding guns. But that is not the only evidence here. There’s a third incident on January 4, 2025, in which Anthony took video of himself pointing a gun at a house before running away. It is unclear whose home he was targeting.
Fox News noted, “By May 17, 2024, Anthony had told Perez [his girlfriend] he was going to shoot a woman, writing, ‘im shooting her,’ the notice says. On June 10, 2024, he allegedly threatened to shoot Perez by asking, ‘how many bullets uu want coming out of ur chest.’ … By March 2025, the messages directed at Perez had grown more threatening. Anthony allegedly texted her on March 8, 2025, ‘imma f—— murder u … yo friends go die … sho them ts.’”
He said in November 2024 that he had taken a gun and a knife to school.
In other words, there were only about 1,000 red flags.
And herein lies the problem. We are a society so addicted to narrative that we overlook the actual circumstances of the case.
I’ve said this about every criminal case I can remember. Look at the actual evidence in any case, and you are likely to come to a better conclusion than if you don’t look at the evidence.
And if the narrative matters more than the evidence, if you’re James Talarico trotting around trying to win the black vote in Texas by saying that Karmelo Anthony is a victim of the system, you are doing something morally wrong.
You should not spin fact patterns to fit your narrative.
It is a terrible moral mistake.
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