Ted Cruz called Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's claim that the American Revolution was fought against the "billionaires of their time" "bizarrely foolish" and "profoundly ideological" on his podcast Monday.
The clash followed Ocasio-Cortez's remarks that "you can't earn a billion dollars" without abusing the system and her insistence that the founders were revolting against an extreme merger of wealth, power and the state.
Cruz argued the richest Americans of that era helped finance the Revolutionary War, saying Ocasio-Cortez had inverted the history and accusing her of pushing communism.
Ocasio-Cortez has not backed down, defending her broader critique on X by pointing to what she said is $50 billion a year in wage theft from American workers.
Were America's founders wealthy elites fighting government overreach, or revolutionaries fighting a system of concentrated power and wealth?
Does the modern problem of 'wage theft' echo the same principles of exploitation that fueled the American Revolution?