"Is the U.S. better or is the world better? Is the U.S. better off today than we were four years ago? Obviously not, economically not. I think our stature in the world is not the same"
About this Quote
The four-years-ago benchmark is the tell. It’s a campaign-season move, the kind of before-and-after snapshot meant to short-circuit partisan abstractions. Williams is asking listeners to perform an audit. If your wallet is thinner, if your job feels less secure, if your future feels more brittle, then the story you’re being sold about "strength" starts to look like branding. "Obviously not" is deliberately impatient; he’s positioning the economic verdict as settled fact, implicitly scolding anyone treating politics as sports.
Then he widens the aperture from economics to "stature", a word that lands because it’s both intangible and legible. You can’t chart it neatly, but you can feel it in diplomatic isolation, in headlines about war and alliances, in whether the country seems admired or merely feared. Coming from an entertainer, the move is especially pointed: a media figure leveraging public familiarity to argue that reputation is policy. The subtext is anxiety about decline - not just the fear of being poorer, but of being smaller, less credible, less listened to - and a warning that national greatness isn’t declared; it’s maintained.
Quote Details
| Topic | Money |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
| Cite |
Citation Formats
APA Style (7th ed.)
Williams, Montel. (2026, January 18). Is the U.S. better or is the world better? Is the U.S. better off today than we were four years ago? Obviously not, economically not. I think our stature in the world is not the same. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/is-the-us-better-or-is-the-world-better-is-the-us-19141/
Chicago Style
Williams, Montel. "Is the U.S. better or is the world better? Is the U.S. better off today than we were four years ago? Obviously not, economically not. I think our stature in the world is not the same." FixQuotes. January 18, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/is-the-us-better-or-is-the-world-better-is-the-us-19141/.
MLA Style (9th ed.)
"Is the U.S. better or is the world better? Is the U.S. better off today than we were four years ago? Obviously not, economically not. I think our stature in the world is not the same." FixQuotes, 18 Jan. 2026, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/is-the-us-better-or-is-the-world-better-is-the-us-19141/. Accessed 13 Feb. 2026.



