President Donald Trump on Wednesday told attendees at a rally in Texas that his wife of 21 years, Melania Trump, addresses him the same way as one of his employees rather than using his name or any other term of endearment.

The president was speaking in support of Texas Attorney General and GOP Senate candidate Ken Paxton when he began an extended rant alleging that Paxton’s opponent, Democratic state representative James Talarico, is a vegan , which Talarico denies.

But he quickly went off on a tangent about the pronunciation of “vegan” and recalled being corrected on it by his wife.

“You know, my wife told me ‘sir, you have to do me a favor — it’s not vay-gan, it’s vee-gan,” he said.

Talarico, the 37-year-old seminarian who is currently leading Paxton in most recent polls of the Texas Senate race, has repeatedly denied subscribing to a vegan or vegetarian diet — a lifestyle choice that would be politically perilous in a cattle-raising state such as Texas.

But Paxton’s campaign — and Trump — have repeatedly claimed the Democrat abstains from animal products.

The president continued repeating the scurrilous claim about Talarico’s diet, telling the partisan crowd that his claims to a carnivorous lifestyle are fabricated.

“Now he says he loves meat, but he’s a vegan — see, Melania? I got that right,” he said.

“He’s a vegan. He wants to eat a piece of lettuce, a little piece of lettuce, please.”

Trump then suggested that a recent absence from the campaign trail on Talarico’s part is because of gastrointestinal illness brought on by eating meat for political purposes.

“You know where he is? He’s sick because he’s been forced to eat meat for political reasons, and he’s throwing up all over the place. He’s sick,” he said.

He continued with the bizarre story, accusing Talarico of having “forced himself to go to barbecues” and “stuff some little ribs down his throat.”

“But he’d eat, and then what would happen? He’d go to the back of the tent and he’d throw up all over the place because he doesn’t want meat,” Trump claimed.

The GOP’s meat-based attack on the Texas Democrat stems from comments he’d made to the Texas Humane Legislation Network in which he said reducing meat consumption was “existential” for combating climate change.

At no point did Talarico claim to abstain from meat himself, but that hasn’t stopped Republicans from alleging without evidence that he does not so partake.

For his part, Talarico has said he has “been eating barbecue since before Ken Paxton’s first indictment,” a reference to the Republican’s long-running legal troubles.

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