Populism in Two Keys: Trump and Mamdani

Zohran Mamdani “won’t be getting any” federal funding to fulfill his campaign promises if elected mayor, declared Donald Trump on Truth Social. On the same day, Mamdani shot back that Trump was simply going through the stages of grief over his own electoral defeat. Their clash made headlines as yet another bitter partisan exchange. But beneath the barbs lies a deeper question: is this really just a contest between two opposing political visions, or are Trump and Mamdani, for all their differences, united by something more fundamental? The answer, and the topic I want to focus on, is populism.

If we don’t like something, we call it populist. It carries a pejorative charge, suggesting demagoguery, manipulation, or anti-intellectualism. Yet its history tells a different story. In the United States, the word first took root in the Farmers’ Alliance and the People’s Party (1891–1908), movements that sought to challenge entrenched elites and demand economic justice. In Latin America, where politics has rarely been organized in strictly class terms, populism has long been the language of “the people vs the elite” (Laclau, 2005): from Juan Domingo Perón in Argentina to Alberto Fujimori in Peru, to Hugo Chávez in Venezuela. If a single concept can stretch to describe figures as different as Trump, Mamdani, and Chávez, then what exactly is populism?

The academy offers two influential answers. The first, associated with Cas Mudde, treats populism as an ideology or more precisely, a thin ideology. Its basic grammar is the opposition between the virtuous, unified people and the corrupt elite. Because it is “thin,” it must attach itself to “thicker” ideologies such as socialism, nationalism which give it concrete content. The second, articulated by Robert S. Jansen, treats populism not as ideology but as practice, as a political tactic, a way of doing politics. From this perspective, populism is less about doctrine than about performance: the enactment of the people as a collective subject, and the strategies through which leaders claim to embody them.

Through this lens, both Trump and Mamdani mobilise populism, but in strikingly different ways. Trump’s populism is rooted in resentment rather than empowerment. His rhetorical frame is nationalistic and identity-heavy, drawing on cultural grievance and nostalgia. His enemies are familiar: immigrants, globalists, the establishment, the media. Against a Democratic Party that increasingly resembles an academic elite, Trump positions himself as the anti-elite outsider.  

Mamdani’s populism, by contrast, is grounded in affordability. His adversaries are not scapegoated minorities but corporate landlords, bureaucratic gatekeepers, and establishment politicians such as Cuomo and Adams. His style is clarity, not conspiracy. The villains in his story are tied to austerity, rent hikes, and decaying infrastructure. His message is disciplined and economic-first: tenants, transit, affordability, infrastructure. And he speaks in lived community terms: “Queens aunties,” “Bronx tenants.” By centring affordability, Mamdani forged a coalition of working-class immigrants, young voters, and progressive elites, crossing the ethnocultural divides that often structure New York politics. 

Whether Trump is handing out cheeseburgers in a McDonald’s or Mamdani is chatting with halal cart vendors, both come across as authentic, a quality voters often prize over the polish of establishment politicians (Kamala Harris comes to mind). Both operate within the same political style, but one channels it toward grievance, the other toward solidarity. 

This brings us to the central idea: populism is not inherently good or bad. It is a tool. Like electricity, it can be used to fry an egg or to power an electric chair. In Trump’s hands, populism corrodes democracy through scapegoating and institutional distrust. In Mamdani’s hands, populism is channelled toward material concerns and community solidarity rather than cultural grievance. At an even deeper level, populism has a material base of large sectors without any protection. Trump did not come from nowhere. His ascent is the product of a decades-long process of class dealignment, in which the Democratic Party’s embrace of corporate-friendly policies steadily alienated working-class voters and left fertile ground for his politics of grievance. Trump is, in many ways, the political consequence of Obama.

The emergence of populism is a reminder of one side of democracy we often forget: the demos. It recalls the core definition of democracy, where authority is rooted in the people and legitimacy flows upward from them. We tend to forget that authority is rooted in the people and the people is the source of political authority. Therefore, populism is not good or bad, it is inevitable when elites drift too far from “the people.” 

Whether in Trump’s hands or Mamdani’s, populism is often treated as democracy’s danger, but it is neither its highest form nor its sworn enemy. As Panizza reminds us, it is instead a mirror: a reflection in which democracy contemplates itself, warts and all, discovering both its strengths and what is lacking.

Image: Wikimedia Commons/Bingjiefu He

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