Populist Rhetoric Quotes

I think Donald Trump was successful in capturing "drain the swamp, change Washington, a big screw-you to the status quo" - which has already been ironic since election night. But it was one of his big messages, and there's a broader sense of how to address the feelings of so many people left behind by the economy.

"Make America great again." You know, to a lot of people, well, that's jingoistic. That's nationalism. That's cheap, that's rank, that's not a movement.

I would caution against fueling cheap populism. First of all, every German who has spent a vacation in Greece knows that the standard of living there isn't higher than it is in Germany. Second, Greece is paying a high price for European assistance.

Pat Buchanan is a … crazed Davy Crockett running around the parapets of Nixon’s Alamo.

George Bush ran a campaign where he bragged about being an anti-intellectual, dismissing his Harvard and Yale pedigree, pretending he was an American every day, ordinary everyman, and as a result of that, played up his fumbling speech because it signified that he was a good guy. That is deeply and profoundly anti-intellectual.

I don't care about Donald Trump himself. I care and I worry about the very big base that supports him because this kind of language would have been absolutely nonexistent maybe 15, 20 - by the way, I follow the American elections, and I have never seen someone who is that offensive. I have seen people who are stupid. But stupid and offensive, that's new.

Putin is now nationalist. And what he does is, he tells the Russian people, OK, you may have a little less chicken in your pot, but I'm making Russia great again. Look what we're doing all other the world. Everyone is paying attention to us. And Russia is a great power, on par with the United States and others.

The surge in right-wing populism and the phenomenon of Trump are related. You can think of them together as the same problem.

By playing down to the idea of the common man, dogmatic political authority exploits him... So the ideal of innate aristocracy of which hour forefathers dreamed is betrayed for votes in the name of democracy.

Trump is a hybrid phenomenon as I see it. He is somewhat like UKIP and Le Pen with his right-wing populism that espouses some fascist overtones, but he's also partly just the old neoliberalism in disguise, especially if we look at some of the people he appointed to his cabinet.

Greetings, conversationalists across the fruited plain, this is Rush Limbaugh, the most dangerous man in America, with the largest hypothalamus in North America, serving humanity simply by opening my mouth, destined for my own wing in the Museum of Broadcasting, executing everything I do flawlessly with zero mistakes, doing this show with half my brain tied behind my back just to make it fair because I have talent on loan from ... God. Rush Limbaugh. A man. A legend. A way of life.

The "Hate Priest"--Father Coughlan--had a daily radio audience that was much larger than Rush Limbaugh has today and that was in a much smaller country.

The problem is never the populist’s imperfect capacity to represent the people’s will; rather, it’s always the institutions that somehow produced the wrong outcomes. So even if they look properly democratic, there must be something going on behind the scenes that allows corrupt elites to continue to betray the people. Conspiracy theories are thus not a curious addition to populist rhetoric; they are rooted in and emerge from the very logic of populism itself.

Sarah Palin is a great example of someone that just stirs the pot for the sake of the attention. No vision, no critical thinking, no backup to her statements. Just to incite little riots everywhere and capitalize upon it financially. To me, she is a microcosm of the ultimate cynicism in American politics.

Donald Trump came along and spoke in a language that speaks directly to a portion of the Republican base with what they want to hear. I don't think that he actually has a very significant ideology.

Trump represents 30 percent of right wing ideology of white scared people. People who have freaked out as Trump points the blame on Mexicans when you have what you have in Europe. He is making all of the white people scared only 3 out of 10 people really believe all the stuff that is being said by him. You have to remember that there are still 7 out of 10 people in this country who don't think his ideas are good ideas. I am not afraid of Trump; I am more afraid of the people that think his ideas are good.

Another similarity of Brexit and Trump's campaigns was an attack on so-called elites. This is not so much a failure of capitalism as of its high priests in the economic profession, for which we must all take some responsibility.

If saying 'Italians first' is xenophobic, then I don't know what to say.

Elites are once again invoking Reagan, dropping their G's and saying things in a folksy sort of way that's meant to capture the hearts of people. And it's all fraud; it's all stagecraft. And people are falling for a great deal of elite behavior in this country packaged as if it's proletariat behavior.

I think America has the best assholes in the world. I defy the Belgians or the Japanese to produce something like a Donald Trump.

For I must not measure the speech of a statesman to his people by the impression which it leaves in a university professor, but by the effect it exerts on the people. And this alone gives the standard for the speaker's genius.

I think if somebody comes up and simply says, your jobs? I'm going to bring them back. You're not comfortable with the browning of America? I'm going to build a wall. ISIS, I'm going to defeat them. Those are very - it's a simple, but it was a compelling message for a lot of people.

This feels like a Steve Bannon whispering in [Donald Trump's] ear.

We've been very lucky to have UKIP in the U.K. If we hadn't been here, the BNP would be doing very well.

Donald Trump said: I, Donald Trump, yes, I am going to take on the entire establishment. I'm going to take on the political establishment. I am going to take on the economic establishment. I'm going to take on the media establishment. And I think a lot of people responded positively to that message.