Who counts as a real American? Who is a traitor or enemy of America? Populists — including Trump and the Republican Party — shrink and stretch their conceptions of the people (aka, Americans; that is, members of their own tribe exclusively) and of their enemies (traitors, liberals, Democrats …; in other words, their opposition) to disqualify their political opponents. Us vs. Them is the keystone of the populist worldview.
In a discussion with two New York Times colleagues, Carlos Lozada responds to a question about Donald Trump’s first 100 days. “What has mattered most?“
Lozada’s response [my emphasis]:
I think that one thing I’ve been thinking about is the notion, as you just put it, of “We, the people” — that’s how the Constitution begins. And what I’ve been thinking about with Trump is that so much of what he’s doing is limiting the universe of “We, the people.” He’s telling us that there are people who really don’t count in that world. And that could be federal workers — they’re expendable, their loyalties are suspect, we don’t need them. The U.S.-born children of undocumented immigrants also don’t belong, aren’t really “We, the people,” should not receive citizenship at birth as the 14th Amendment tells us. Opponents of the president, former officials who have criticized him don’t deserve to be protected.
You know, it’s another one of the key aspects of populism that populist leaders purport to speak for the people, but the definition of the people is always malleable. It always changes, it’s always shifting. And inevitably it becomes smaller, it shrinks until the only people who are “We, the people” are the supporters of the leader. And to me that’s one of the through lines of the Trump era, certainly of the first 100 days of this second term.
In an October 2016 book review of What Is Populism by Jan-Werner Müller, Lozada cited three salient characteristics of populism offered by Müller:
First, populists are anti-elitists, meaning they criticize the established political, cultural and economic leadership. Second, they must be anti-pluralist, claiming sole representation of the people. When Trump says that “I alone can fix” what ails us, or assures supporters that “I am your voice,” he is asserting uncontested, unmediated leadership. Finally, populism is exclusionary, in the sense that “the people” are an increasingly circumscribed set; though they might begin as the white working class or another loosely defined group, they are quickly reduced to supporters of the leader. Otherwise, you are traitorous, inauthentic. “This is the core claim of populism,” Müller writes. “Only some of the people are really the people.”
Even before Trump and MAGA, this constriction of the people whose views counted as politically legitimate had become a trope of the Republican Party. In 1995, Newt Gingrich coached GOP House members on how to smear Democrats with Contrasting Words, such as traitors, sick, pathetic, betray, cheat, steal, greed, radical, and liberal. This approach found a home at Fox News Channel, launched in 1996.
By 2016, Trump and the GOP routinely reviled political opponents with name-calling and invective. Democratic constituencies were — and are — cast as unfit, unworthy of the rights and freedoms guaranteed by the Constitution and the rule of law. Republicans regard election denialism, and the lie that Trump won in 2020, as justified because Democratic votes shouldn’t count. From Russell Vought to Elon Musk to the North Carolina supreme court majority, their contempt for Democrats justifies in their minds authoritarian behavior antithetical to our democratic institutions, including equality before the law, impartial justice, free and fair elections, the peaceful transfer of power, and much else, even political violence.
The other side of the coin
Things are equally chilling with a simple switch of perspectives. Just as populists insist on determining who counts as the people in We, the people, so too for the scapegoats designated as enemies of the people.
In a recent post, touching on the endemic corruption on display during Trump’s Mideast trip, Josh Marshall observed that while Marco Rubio has said that “Hamas supporters” are not welcome in the U.S.A., Donald Trump is eagerly making deals with the Qataris, who “are quite literally the top bankrollers of Hamas and they speak for them and help them negotiate with the Great Powers and with Israel.” Marshall continues:
It reminds me of a story about Karl Lueger, the populist Mayor of Vienna at the turn of the 20th century who was one of the key articulators of and arguably one of the creators of mass-politics political antisemitism. And yet Lueger would himself dine with and socialize with members of the capital’s Jewish elite. There’s a famous story in which someone asks Lueger: “You’re the big enemy of the Jews and yet you socialize with them and some are your friends. How can you justify that?” To which, Lueger is said to have responded, “I decide who’s a Jew.”
Like Lueger, like Trump. He’ll decide who’s a Hamas supporter.
In today’s Republican Party, few are willing to oppose the authoritarian stance of the president who decides who counts and who doesn’t, who is friend and who is foe. The national party is on board for the undemocratic ride in 2025. The GOP House and Senate majorities have chosen to embrace Trump’s lawless, reckless, corrupt regime.