Is jQuery .text() method XSS safe?

When you set the text of an element using the text method, jQuery uses createTextNode internally, which escapes all special characters.

From the jQuery docs:

We need to be aware that this method escapes the string provided as
necessary so that it will render correctly in HTML. To do so, it calls
the DOM method .createTextNode(), which replaces special characters
with their HTML entity equivalents (such as < for <)

So yes, it should be safe. Here’s your example in jsfiddle. Notice how the tags appear as literal text.