How to Use demagogic in a Sentence

demagogic

adjective
  • But these fleeting jabs were fair response to their targets’ demagogic sniping.
    — Andrew C. McCarthy, National Review, 28 Feb. 2020
  • Such statements have struck many liberals as demagogic rhetoric piled atop a horrific crime.
    — Alessandro Marazzi Sassoon, New York Times, 26 Feb. 2024
  • His victory on the back of a divisive, demagogic campaign set off protests in cities across the country.
    — Jack Holmes, Esquire, 15 Nov. 2016
  • Wary observers say that Bukele has followed a demagogic playbook.
    — Soudi Jiménez, Los Angeles Times, 26 Feb. 2021
  • First off, reading out demagogic business bashing scripts is not Biden’s nature.
    — Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, TIME, 26 June 2024
  • But the low-down and demagogic approach is effective — otherwise, people wouldn’t adopt it.
    — Jay Nordlinger, National Review, 6 Sep. 2021
  • The logic behind [the hard-liners’] argument is flawed and demagogic.
    — Ramin Mostaghim, latimes.com, 19 July 2017
  • All these choices are demagogic, geared toward endearing the electorate.
    — Armond White, National Review, 22 Dec. 2021
  • Trump’s demagogic use of social media has been a blight on American democracy for years, of course, but the stakes are now bigger than ever.
    — John Cassidy, The New Yorker, 27 May 2020
  • Some earlier leaders of the religious right were also cruel and demagogic.
    — Hillary Rodham Clinton, The Atlantic, 29 Jan. 2026
  • Yet the reaction of the city’s political leaders ranged from lethargic to misinformed and even demagogic.
    — Jon Talton, The Seattle Times, 15 Sep. 2017
  • Trump has many of the mannerisms and much of the style of a plebiscitary dictator who wields demagogic rhetoric to turn the crowd against liberal institutions.
    — Matthew Yglesias, Vox, 15 Dec. 2018
  • These were the kind of comments that Republicans of the past might have seen at Democratic conventions and viewed as demagogic.
    — Aaron Blake, Washington Post, 18 July 2024
  • Kuma, a constant source of paradoxes and ironies, often makes demagogic statements on behalf of his own brand of architectural modesty.
    — Nikil Saval, New York Times, 15 Feb. 2018
  • The deposition would not be a day at the beach, but the investigators doing the questioning tend to be less demagogic than the pols performing at public hearings.
    — Andrew C. McCarthy, National Review, 11 Jan. 2024
  • Disaster would come, Bryce believed, at the hands of a demagogic president with an enthusiastic public base.
    — Jon Meacham, Town & Country, 30 Sep. 2020
  • This is how demagogic politicians and charismatic preachers can win us over, often despite their reliance on implausible narratives that beguile us.
    — Washington Post, 26 Feb. 2021
  • Roughly seventy years ago the left's forebears made precisely the same move when confronted with an overly zealous, demagogic critic of communism.
    — Damon Linker, The Week, 25 June 2021
  • Trump also returned to his favorite demagogic theme, claiming that undocumented immigrants pose a grave threat to citizens.
    — Jeet Heer, New Republic, 31 Jan. 2018
  • The implicit contrast is to ignorant brutes who gravitate to demagogic leaders and resentful agendas.
    — Samuel Goldman, The Week, 9 Oct. 2021
  • The machinery of demagogic authoritarianism may shift from decade to decade and century to century, taking us from the scroll to the newsreel to the tweet, but its content is always the same.
    — Adam Gopnik, The New Yorker, 13 Jan. 2017
  • Trump’s demagogic and xenophobic rhetoric, as well as his willingness to thumb his nose at the Republican establishment, are more than matched by Blankenship.
    — Jeet Heer, The New Republic, 8 May 2018
  • Critics of Erdogan’s demagogic rule suggest his intransigence now ought to raise questions about Turkey’s place within the alliance.
    — Ishaan Tharoor, Washington Post, 20 May 2022
  • Other governments in Latin America and Europe with far less demagogic leadership oversaw covid death rates worse than that of Brazil.
    — Washington Post, 22 Oct. 2021
  • That the filter bubbles that Facebook has created and nurtured have made a lot of people in this country susceptible to fake news, to propaganda, to demagogic appeals.
    — Isaac Chotiner, Slate Magazine, 5 Oct. 2017
  • In leftist Hollywood’s typically demagogic fashion, King and Kemp proffer the post-Obama idea that the past was equal to or worse than the present.
    — Armond White, National Review, 7 Apr. 2021
  • Within a year, Fulbright had helped persuade 66 other senators to join him in censuring McCarthy and ending his demagogic run.
    — Charles King, Foreign Affairs, 18 June 2021
  • T'Kuvma's demagogic leaning and interest in racial purity connect to current social issues, as the original series did in the '60s.
    — Bill Keveney, USA TODAY, 24 Sep. 2017
  • The dialect society voters who (literally) snapped their fingers in approval for woke would watch it get twisted by political commentators and a demagogic right-wing into what was tantamount to a slur.
    — Literary Hub, 13 Nov. 2025
  • So, Sacramento needs to undermine the demagogic manufacturers by stepping up vote counting while keeping elections virtually fraud-free.
    — Los Angeles Times, 15 June 2026

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'demagogic.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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