Populist Leader Quotes

Donald Trump is in office. It's not just another Republican candidate - Donald Trump. And people were so disaffected with the liberal message that they were willing to vote for him.

Donald Trump amplifies the worst instincts. And his nationalism is really a white racist supremacist nationalism.

If there had been a charismatic figure in the United States who could mobilize fears, anger, racism, a sense of loss of the future that belongs to us, this country could be in real danger. We're lucky that there never has been an honest, charismatic figure. McCarthy was too much of a thug, you know? Nixon was too crooked. Trump, I think, is too much of a clown. So, we've been lucky.

Demagogues like [Donald] Trump come along. He says I know what the cause is. Remember, later, the cause was that Mexicans who are coming to this country, well, they were criminals or rapists. Now it is Muslims.

There's one way of looking at the Trump phenomenon that he's essentially a Doofus or he is an opportunist.

Like my father, Trump also understands working-class Americans.

Donald Trump is not going anywhere. And we see as calculated as these are, he has a knack for telling a certain segment of a base what they want.

You could say that Trump is the 21st century version of Pat Buchanan. Protectionist, anti-immigrant.

Donald Trump lives and operates in a political world, but he's not political. This is what people still don't get.

[Donald Trump] is his own man - distinctly American. And where else would an independent spirit like his find a following than in the land of the free and the home of the brave?

It’s frightening. Our politics, because of him [Donald Trump], is defending to a level of a third world country. There’s just nothing beneath him.

When the media's attacking me, when the establishment Republicans are attacking me and the Democrats are attacking me, that means I'm the 'We the People' person, and I'm on the right course as far as I'm concerned.

[Donald] Trump is what happens in America every time it feels economically and politically threatened, and it encounters the limitations of its own white supremacists practices.

As much as I disagree with Bernie Sanders - at least Bernie Sanders was a man seemingly of principle, a man who actually believed in something, was not surrounding himself with corruption and was moving in the direction that the people are moving.

Millions of Americans who know that Barack understands their dreams; that Barack will fight for people like them; and that Barack will finally bring the change we need.

I was Donald Trump before Donald Trump became popular, so I think I should support him since we're one of the same cloth.

Obviously, we're really upset about the state of the election. It's horrifying, as everybody knows, that we could have a totally fascist president.

In 1976, Jimmy Carter - peanut farmer; carried his own suitcase, imagine that - somewhat tapped America's durable but shallow reservoir of populism. By 1980, ordinariness in high office had lost its allure.

There's no liberal equivalent of Donald Trump.

Donald Trump removed all doubt. He is running for president as a fascist demagogue.

Trump will never give up his style, his way to target his enemies. The Americans are fed up with the bullshit they heard for many years. They want the truth, they want to believe what their leaders are saying again. Trump is such an underdog, a fighter - a man who rebels against the establishment, against all kinds of resistance. That is what Americans love.

I see Donald Trump as a phenomenon of an expression of certain fears, certain resentments, that have been a running thread in American history.

No people ever recognize their dictator in advance. He never stands for election on the platform of dictatorship. He always represents himself as the instrument - the Incorporated National Will. ... When our dictator turns up you can depend on it that he will be one of the boys, and he will stand for everything traditionally American. And nobody will ever say "Heil" to him, nor will they call him "Führer" or "Duce." But they will greet him with one great big, universal, democratic, sheeplike bleat of "O.K., Chief! Fix it like you wanna, Chief! Oh Kaaaay!"

He [Andrew Jackson] looked after the little fellow who had no pull.

If the media is just a cheerleader for an authoritarian populist, who isn't that popular, then we're in a sorry state. The media has to be critical - it has to scrutinize it, it has to call out things.