Comment by immibis
Populist denotes leaders who say anything the people want to hear - in other words, leaders who are very effective at propaganda. A populist will say they want to reduce the debt. People will vote for him, because they want the debt to decrease. That populist will increase the debt more than any other president in history and his followers won't find out - he'll tell them some different propaganda. He might even say he lowered the debt even though he obviously didn't.
A populist will say he supports free speech, then make it illegal for certain people to speak on TV, cut funding to universities where people are allowed to say things he doesn't like, take ownership of the largest social media platforms and ban everyone who disagrees with him, all while repeating the claim of supporting free speech.
A populist will say every other politician is corrupt and he's the only one who can end the corruption. When elected, he'll be more corrupt than anyone else ever, while proclaiming there's no corruption any more, and we have always been at war with Eastasia.
So a populist is a politician who says things people want to hear, often ends up lying, and feigns achievement in the face of failure? So literally every single politician worldwide is a populist?