And the Hi, I'm Bill Crystal.

Welcome to Conversations, and I'm joined again by Harvey Mansfield, Harvard University.

This is three weeks after Donald Trump was elected and

you're going to explain the the meaning of Trump from a point of view of

political science, political philosophy. Yes. Is this Trump an altogether new phenomenon or is he

intelligible in terms of classical political science? Well let's see.

Yeah, let's see. He's certainly a challenge to, Trump has a challenge to political science. But let's

start with Trump as demagogue. The traditional term

demagogue also used by the American founders as something to be avoided in a popular

government.

Demagogue and Greek means an actor for the people, Timos, it's the beginning of it.

A people actor, and it's unclear whether the actor is the instrument of the people or the people are

the instrument of the actor.

And I think that's a characteristic unclarity of a demagogue.

But the classical writers seem to come down at the end to say that he's an instrument of the people.

So demagogues, demagogy is characteristic of the people

that's, so to speak, their fault, they are to blame for the people that they are using to gain their ends.

And the demagogue also has this characteristic which Trump has for sure and that he loves to be loved.

And he doesn't worry about the quality of the people who love him.

He's only worried about the quantity.

So he wants a lot of people to love him and so to speak without discrimination.

And that bears a close resemblance to what we call a celebrity in in our Democratic society now.

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