Few political thinkers are invoked more frequently in discussions of Donald Trump than Niccolò Machiavelli. The comparison is tempting. Both are associated with the hard realities of political power, the importance of political performance, the manipulation of appearances and the capacity of a leader to transform political uncertainty into personal authority. Yet comparing Trump with Machiavelli requires more than identifying ruthless political behaviour. Machiavelli was not simply an advocate of deception or authoritarianism; he was a political theorist concerned with how leaders acquire, preserve and exercise power under conditions of uncertainty. Trump’s political career therefore provides an opportunity to reconsider what Machiavellian politics might mean in a modern mass democracy.
Machiavelli’s “The Prince”, written in the context of Renaissance Italy’s political instability, rejects the assumption that political leadership can be understood solely through conventional morality. The central question is practical: how can political authority be acquired and maintained in a dangerous and unpredictable environment? Machiavelli argues that rulers must understand the difference between how politics ought to operate and how it actually operates. A successful leader must possess “Vertu”, roughly, the capacity, energy, adaptability and strategic intelligence necessary to respond to changing circumstances, and must understand the role of “fortuna”, the unpredictable forces that shape political events. The political leader, in this sense, is not merely a custodian of principles but an actor navigating uncertainty.
Trump’s political style displays several features that can be examined through this Machiavellian framework. His 2015 presidential announcement presented him as an outsider confronting an established political class. He declared that Washington needed to be changed from the outside and promised to act independently of established political interests. This rhetoric constructed a direct relationship between the leader and “the American people,” bypassing conventional political intermediaries. Political scientists have subsequently identified personalistic leadership and direct appeals to heterogeneous mass constituencies as central characteristics of populist politics.
This personalisation of politics is particularly relevant to Machiavelli. In “The Prince”, political authority is repeatedly discussed in relation to the qualities and reputation of the ruler. Appearance matters because political actors rarely have complete knowledge of one another’s intentions. Machiavelli therefore argues that a ruler must understand how to appear virtuous even when circumstances require actions that conventional morality might condemn. The distinction between possessing a quality and appearing to possess it is consequently fundamental to his political analysis.
Trump’s political communication similarly places extraordinary emphasis on political image and personal branding. “Trump” functions not simply as a candidate’s name but as a political identity. His campaign slogan, “Make America Great Again,” condensed a complex political programme into a personalised and emotionally resonant message. His 2017 inaugural address likewise constructed a narrative of national decline followed by restoration, describing economic dislocation, insecurity and political alienation before promising that the situation would change. Such rhetoric can be analysed as a political strategy for transforming diffuse grievances into a coherent relationship between leader, followers and perceived political enemies.
Another point of comparison concerns the construction of political enemies. Machiavelli understood that political authority is strengthened when rulers can identify threats to political order and demonstrate their capacity to confront them. He famously argues that a ruler should seek to avoid being hated while ensuring that he is not despised. The distinction is important: political authority depends not merely on affection but on perceptions of strength, competence and resolve.
Trump’s rhetoric has frequently relied on confrontation. During his first presidential campaign, immigration, political elites, foreign competitors and other perceived threats were presented as evidence of a political order that had failed ordinary Americans. His 2016 Republican National Convention speech, for example, emphasised borders, crime, immigration and economic insecurity as interconnected national problems. Academic research on Trump’s rhetoric has similarly identified an aggressive, oppositional style in which political conflict is central rather than incidental.
Nevertheless, the comparison has important limits. Machiavelli’s Prince concerns a ruler operating in a world of city-states, dynastic politics, military competition and weak constitutional institutions. Trump operated within a modern constitutional republic containing elections, courts, legislatures, political parties, bureaucracies and an independent media. The institutional environment therefore differs fundamentally. Indeed, comparative scholarship on populism emphasises that the political consequences of personalistic leadership depend heavily on institutional constraints.
There is also a danger in reducing Machiavelli to the popular stereotype of the “Machiavellian” politician. Machiavelli’s political thought cannot be reduced to the proposition that the ends justify the means. His Discourses on Livy demonstrates a sustained interest in republican government, civic conflict and institutional arrangements. The work has even been interpreted as revealing a fundamental preference for republican political organisation. Consequently, invoking Machiavelli to explain Trump should not automatically imply that Machiavelli would have supported Trump’s politics.
The more interesting comparison lies elsewhere. Both Machiavelli and Trump illuminate the importance of political perception. Political power is not exercised through institutions alone; it is also exercised through narratives about strength, weakness, loyalty, betrayal and national decline. A leader who persuades supporters that existing institutions are ineffective can present personal authority as an alternative to institutional authority. Contemporary scholarship describes this as a central feature of personalistic populism, in which leaders seek direct, relatively unmediated relationships with followers.
The comparison also highlights the importance of political adaptability. Machiavelli’s concept of virtu does not mean moral virtue in the modern sense. It describes the ability to respond effectively to changing circumstances. Trump’s political career demonstrates the importance of adapting messages to political opportunities while maintaining a recognisable personal identity. His political communication has repeatedly combined disruption of established political conventions with appeals to a defined constituency. Whether such strategies strengthen or weaken democratic institutions is a separate empirical question, dependent on institutional responses and political behaviour rather than on the personality of one leader alone.
Ultimately, Machiavelli offers a useful vocabulary for analysing Trump, but not a simple verdict on him. The comparison draws attention to the political importance of reputation, personal authority, conflict, uncertainty and popular mobilisation. At the same time, the differences between Renaissance statecraft and contemporary constitutional democracy are too substantial to ignore. The value of Machiavelli today is therefore not that he provides a formula for understanding Trump, but that he encourages a more uncomfortable question: how much of political power depends upon institutions, and how much depends upon the ability of leaders to persuade citizens that political power is embodied in the leader himself?
Trump’s political career makes that question unusually visible. Machiavelli helps explain why political actors compete not only to control government but also to control the meaning of political events. In that respect, the Florentine political theorist remains relevant not because Trump is simply a twenty-first-century Machiavellian prince, but because both illuminate the enduring relationship between political power, perception and the struggle to command popular allegiance.
