Clash of the Populists
This mirroring extends to their rhetoric, where both men have a fondness for, well, name-calling that’s rare among presidential candidates and popes. The insults differ: Trump calls people “low energy,” “liar” and “loser,” while Francis prefers “Pharisee” and “self-absorbed Promethean neo-Pelagian” (though he’s not above “whiner” and “sourpuss” as well). But their pungent language reflects a shared mastery of the contemporary media environment, in which controversy and unpredictability are the great currencies, and having people constantly asking Did he really just say that? is the surest ticket to the world’s attention.
.. The popular constituencies they speak for are very different, of course. Trump is a nationalist, speaking on behalf of the unhappy Western working class, while Francis is a Latin American and a globalist, speaking for the developing world’s poor — which is why immigration policy naturally puts them at loggerheads.
.. But for now, the last thing they have in common in this: Everything that makes them interesting makes them dangerous as well.