Fox News Channel panelists, including Chris Wallace and Brit Hume, described Donald Trump’s political ascendance as indicative of both a domestic and international political realignment away from a conventional left-right dichotomy towards an insider-outsider split.
Democrat operative Mo Elleithee disconnected Trump’s rise from Brexit, while still connected it to a global rise of populism.
“I do think that what we’re talking is not just a U.S. phenomenon,” said Elleithee. “I think this is a global phenomenon, right now, where the old paradigm is blown up and we are talking about a global populist movement.”
Chris Wallace concurred with Elleithee, describing Trump’s rise as a function of populist resentment towards “the establishment.” He noted that the phenomenon was likely underappreciated by the broader news media.
“This could be our 2000,” said Wallace. “This could be one of these elections that takes on a life of its own on election night, and is just an inflection moment in the history of this country. It’s all part of the ‘ins versus the outs,’ the establishment versus the populists and the people. I think it just shows that there is a – which we didn’t fully detect, but we had an inkling of it – that there, people are just, a lot of people, millions of people, are fed up with politics and politicians and usual, and they just, even if they’re not sure about Donald Trump, they figure, it isn’t working, let’s just thrown ‘em all out, we’ll put him in and if he doesn’t work, we’ll fire him in four years.
Brit Hume elaborated on Wallace’s view, describing Trump as having identified and capitalized on widespread resentment among Americans towards politicians and their satellites.
“One person, the outsider, was the one who saw this political reality and it was Donald Trump,” said Hume, “Ted Cruz had the same insight, but he fell by the wayside because he was too much of an insider, in part, I think. Donald Trump had the insight, he understood that there was this tremendous force in the electorate, this sentiment, and he capitalized on it and got himself nominated, and now he may well have gotten himself elected.”
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