Populist Leadership Quotes

I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn't lose any votes.

Donald Trump among wishy-washy people, who decide one day they want him, and they want his endorsement, they support him, and the next day they don't. It's much better for him to take the message directly to the people.

We believe that leaders should be following the masses. We only ran in leadership campaigns to get our ideas across, to use it as a platform.

Leaders are made in the image of the masses.

If you elect a matinee idol mayor, you're going to have a musical comedy administration.

I am the people's politician. If the day should ever come when the people can't save me, I'll know I'm finished.

If we had a populist president who didn't alienate so many persuadable voters, who took full advantage of a strong economy, and who had the political cunning displayed by Modi or Benjamin Netanyahu or Viktor Orban, the liberal belief in a hidden left-of-center mandate might be exposed as a fond delusion.

The majority in this country have not seen anything wrong with Zuma. I go with the overwhelming feeling of this country. If the majority say, 'Zuma, do this,' I will do it.

The most popular man under a democracy is not the most democratic man, but the most despotic man. The common folk delight in the exactions of such a man. They like him to boss them. Their natural gait is the goose step.

I'm vulgar, I'm a populist. But isn't that what the mayor should be?

All in all, Donald Trump appeals to people who want to be seen the way that Donald Trump sees them.

A problem with a president who leads by stirring the moral sentiments of voters is that he has got to keep stirring them.

That is exactly what Mr. Trump is: The working man and woman's CEO.

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

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.

I don't believe in politics. I only believe in my people. And my people - the ones that follow me - are Latinos. I would go with them till the end of the world.

Putin has mobilized and gathered the desires of millions upon millions of people who have been lied to, cheated, who lost out in the new order of things - and in each of these people is a bit of Putin. They have come together to make the image we know as Putin. Putin himself is just the tip of an iceberg.

Donald Trump was underrated, but he understood social media and he understood reality television.

We all have a dark side but we keep it in its place because it's destructive. And Donald Trump has said, no, no, bring it out because that's the energy we need in order to reverse all these horrible things that have been happening in America.

I don't think Donald Trump is an ideologue, so it's not really his policies that I think are going to maybe fire people up. It's his rhetoric and, you know, his willingness to wield power in a manner that can be potentially exploitative and dangerous.

There's a stupid trend in American politics right now with people who have no experience with politics and no grasp of public service as a profession just deciding that they're going to jump into it. The obvious figurehead of this whole "I am an idiot, therefore I can be a politician" is Donald Trump. People think that ignorance of a profession is somehow qualifying for that profession. It's utterly baffling.

I am and I will remain a populist, because those who listen to the people are doing their job, whereas the radical chic who disgust workers are no longer wanted by the people.

Roosevelt never leads; he always follows. He acts, but he acts only when he thinks the crowd is behind him …. Upon all the great issues he has championed, the country was prepared before he entered the arena.

Donald Trump is an especially depressing phenomena because he is so debased and debasing and millions and millions of people want him to be president. We're seeing how at least whole swathes of white America are becoming your worst nightmare of eternal Zombie High School. Something like a perfect mix of Groundhog Day and The Moronic Inferno. How can it be that a guy who looks like a bloated cadaver pulled from the Gowanus canal, with some rouge on his cheeks and a sticky Something About Mary wig, is actually applauded by his followers for making fun of how other people look?

One of the things you can learn from a figure like Venezuela's Hugo Chavez is that if you take all the resources of the state for yourself, you don't build much of a constituency and you have to rely on repression, and repression is difficult in the modern world.