Texas Democratic US Senate candidate James Talarico turned the tables on a town hall questioner who asked him if he was pushing “class warfare” with his populist economic pitch and frequent criticism of billionaires.

Talarico responded that there is already class warfare in the US.

“It’s the billionaires waging war against the rest of us, and right now the billionaires are winning,” explained the Texas Democrat in a video clip of the town hall posted on social media Wednesday. “They’ve been winning for 50 years. Trickle-down economics is not a theory, it is theft.”

A young man at our town hall asked if I was pushing class warfare.

I told him: “We already have class warfare in this country — billionaires are waging war on the rest of us.” pic.twitter.com/w238OfB8yH
— James Talarico (@jamestalarico) February 12, 2026

Talarico went on to accuse billionaires of “stealing from the American people, stealing the wealth that we created.”

“It’s why everyone is so angry right now,” he continued. “It’s why, no matter how hard you work, you can’t seem to get ahead. The American people are not asking for a whole lot: A job we don’t hate, a house big enough to raise a family in, and a little left over so we can go on vacation every once in a while. That is a lot harder than it should be in America.”

Talarico’s answer on “class warfare” came two days after a Monday report in the Wall Street Journal revealed that labor compensation in the US has fallen to its lowest percentage of gross domestic income since at least 1980, even as corporate profits have risen to the highest percentage of gross domestic income over that same period.

“The divergence between capital and labor helps explain the disconnect between a buoyant economy and pessimistic households,” explained the Journal. “It will also play an outsize role in where the economy goes from here.”

An analysis released in January by the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS) found that the collective wealth of US billionaires surged to $8.1 trillion in 2025, even as many working-class Americans struggled with basic expenses such as groceries, housing and healthcare.

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