Politics & Power Quote by Ed Gillespie

Patriotism is doing quiet work here: it turns a political identity into a presumed default setting. When Ed Gillespie says, "I'm an American first", he’s not just describing himself; he’s staking a claim on the order in which loyalties are supposed to line up. In a country where voters are routinely sorted into demographic blocs, parties, faiths, regions, and cultures, "first" is a subtle reprimand. It implies that other labels-national origin, race, ideology, even party affiliation-should be secondary, maybe suspect, if they seem to compete with the national one.

The second clause is the real maneuver: "and I think that's how most people are". Gillespie moves from personal conviction to an assertion of majority normalcy. It’s a classic politician’s move: define your stance as the mainstream, then treat dissent as niche or extreme without having to name it. The subtext is permission-giving and boundary-setting at once. Permission, because it reassures audiences who worry that civic unity is fraying; boundary-setting, because it casts certain forms of identity politics or cosmopolitanism as out of step with "most people."

Context matters: Gillespie’s career sits in an era when American politics has been saturated with arguments over immigration, globalization, cultural change, and who gets to speak for "real" Americans. The line works because it’s vague enough to be inclusive, but loaded enough to signal a worldview: national belonging as the trump card, and consensus as a rhetorical weapon. It offers unity while quietly deciding whose priorities count as unity in the first place.