Fran Lebowitz once called Donald Trump “a poor person’s idea of a rich person,” saying, “all that stuff he shows you in his house—the gold faucets—if you won the lottery, that’s what you’d buy.”
The quote, taken from a 2016 Vanity Fair article, has since been gilded and embellished to become something like “Donald Trump is a stupid man’s idea of a smart person, a poor man’s idea of a rich man, and a weak man’s idea of a strong man.”
The embellished version has become the more-quoted quote, because there’s an obvious emotional truth to it. (“When the legend becomes fact,” as another famous misquotation has it, “print the legend.”) That Trump is an avatar for a child’s idea of a lot of things, especially masculinity, is key to understanding the entire current political moment. This idea was expressed perhaps most credulously, if unintentionally, by comedian Andrew Schulz a couple weeks back.
https://www.gq.com/story/is-donald-trump-cool-actually (full article is subscription-only)
Here's the Schultz quote:
“Flagrant” podcast host and comedian Andrew Schulz is somewhat turning on Donald Trump after voting for him over Kamala Harris in the 2024 presidential election. During a recent podcast episode (via The Daily Beast), Schulz admitted he’s been sort of duped by Trump. As the comedian put it: “Everything he campaigned on I believe he wanted to do, and now he’s doing the exact opposite thing of every single fucking thing.”
“There’ll be people that they’ll DM me like, ‘You see what your boy’s doing? You voted for this.’ I’m like, ‘I voted for none of this,’” Schulz said. “He’s doing the exact opposite of everything I voted for. I want him to stop the wars — he’s funding them. I want him to shrink spending, reduce the budget — he’s increasing it. It’s like everything that he said he’s going to do — except sending immigrants back, and now he’s even flip-flopped on that, which I kind of like.”
https://variety.com/2025/digital/news/andrew-schulz-regrets-trump-vote-1236453153/
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