People forget that modern populists tend to only claim to care about the people but simply want power for themselves and want to return to a glorified authoritarian version of the past. Populists will claim to support the silent majority with the idea that everyone secretly supports them even if poll numbers and evidence show the opposite. The term was first mentioned by Richard Nixon, so you can see how populism can be associated with a corrupt official pretending that everyone supports them and any of their deeds even if it is something corrupt like Watergate.
You have populist groups like Qanon that have right-wing branches that support dangerous conspiracy theories and fascism based on the idea that democracy is a conspiracy or 'shadow government' that must be overthrown by their authoritarian regime that the 'true people' support. There is even a left-wing branch of Qanon in Russia that wishes to restore the USSR and believes most Russians and East Europeans secretly support them. You have radical Catholic populists who want to go back to something similar to theocratic rule and Japanese populists who miss the days of Japanese Imperialism, which is obviously bad for a number of reasons.
Basically, populism is now associated with movements that generally want to restore some kind of old authoritarian regime and claims that the people secretly support their efforts instead of being associated with groups that truly support the people or majority. Historically, according to the book Populism: A Very Short Introduction from Oxford Press, both Marxist and fascists have referred to themselves as populists even when their parties were unpopular with the majority of people, usually referring to rhetoric claiming that deep down, everyone loves them. Even when the numbers present the opposite.