Talarico Said Dismantle Capitalism. The Campaign Now Calls Him a Proud Capitalist.

A Facebook post from Donna Chance is captioned “BUSTED .... B I G L E Y.” Facebook’s title on it was 78,000 views and 1,600 reactions. The picture is a television. Jesse Watters says, “Here we go in Texas. Just got caught saying this.” The man on the screen is James Talarico. The chyron goes from “TALARICO IN THE HOT SEAT” to a flashback line, “DISMANTLE CAPITAL.”

On the tape he thanks young activists for drawing “the link between climate change and white supremacy and capitalism,” then says seeing how those systems work together is how “we begin the process of dismantling them.” The television audio is a room recording, and one word is muddy. The clean transcript of the same answer, published by CNN’s KFile, is this: “I am so thankful that you asked this question and also thankful that young activists have really drawn the link between climate change and White supremacy and capitalism in our country. And I think only ending the ways that all three of those oppressive systems work together are we gonna be able to begin the process of dismantling them.”

That answer is from September 2020. The Austin Sierra Club held a virtual climate forum. Talarico was a Texas House member in his first term. The question was what lawmakers should do about climate change hitting communities of color hardest. He did not talk about a tax credit. He put capitalism in the same category as white supremacy and said the work was dismantling all three. Later in the same forum he compared Texas leading the country in oil and gas to “being the leader in cassette tapes in the 1980s,” and said, “That industry is not gonna last.” That second line is not in this 23-second reel. It is in the same meeting.

Six years later he is the Democratic nominee for U.S. Senate in Texas, against Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton. Election Day is November 3. Asked about the Sierra Club tape, campaign spokesman JT Ennis told CNN that Talarico has already said some past comments “missed the mark,” and then this: “James is a proud capitalist and agrees with the majority of Texans that racism, natural disasters, and a billionaire-controlled economy are all problems we need to address.”

A proud capitalist does not describe capitalism as an oppressive system that has to be dismantled alongside white supremacy. A candidate who wants Texas oil and gas votes does not get to file the cassette-tape line as a youthful aside and keep the new label. The sentence on the reel is the sentence. The campaign changed the name on it. Donna Chance’s caption is the whole argument she needed.