The greatest showman on Earth
Bill Press examines how President Donald Trump bears striking similarities to showman P.T. Barnum — and not in a good way.
A couple of years ago, I began an interview with Congresswoman Maxine Waters by asking her if she’d ever seen a president like Donald Trump. “President? I’ve never seen a human being like Donald Trump,” she retorted.
Trump is, indeed, sui generis, one of a kind. There’s never been anyone else like him. That’s what everybody says, and that’s what I thought. Until I picked up a copy of “Barnum: An American Life,” a new biography of the legendary showman P.T. Barnum by former Washington Post editor Robert Wilson.
Trump and Barnum are so uncannily similar that, on almost every page, I had to stop and remind myself that Wilson was talking about showman P.T. Barnum, not businessman Donald Trump. In fact, you could replace “Barnum” with “Trump,” and the book still makes perfect sense.
Think about it. For starters, not only are both men flagrant hucksters, they’re proud of it. They know they’re faking it, but they don’t care. P.T. Barnum didn’t believe a shriveled-up monkey body attached to a long fish tail was authentic, but he bought it anyway, dubbed it a mermaid, invited crowds to see the “Fejee Mermaid” — and made a fortune. Donald Trump didn’t really believe Barack Obama was born in Kenya, either, but he spent five years peddling that nonsense anyway — and got elected president.
They’re both self-promoters without peer, who thrive on getting their name in the paper (or face on television). Barnum paid newspaper editors to run feature articles about his colorful spectacles or, preferably, simply about him. Trump has canceled daily White House press briefings because he wants to hog all the on-camera time for himself. He’s the poster boy for Barnum’s arguably most famous quote: “There’s no such thing as bad publicity.”
And when both speak, superlatives fly. You have to laugh out loud when you hear Barnum boast that his museums are “the largest and most interesting ever;” that for “the elevation and refinement of musical taste,” he has “done more than any man living;” or that his charitable contributions have been “seldom paralleled in the histories of professed and professional philanthropists.” How much like the man who brags constantly about attracting the biggest crowds ever, scoring the biggest electoral victory ever or accomplishing more than any president ever, not one word of which is true? Barnum may have created the “Greatest Show on Earth.” Trump just moved it to 1600 Pennsylvania.
Nor did either man show any qualms about acting in bad taste. Barnum “bought” an elderly, blind, toothless and partially paralyzed African-American woman and, ignoring editorial outrage, toured the country with her claiming she was 161 years old and the former nursemaid of George Washington. When she died, he brought her back for one more appearance: selling 1,500 tickets to a public autopsy of her remains in a Broadway theater.
Which, in terms of poor taste, is only matched by Donald Trump’s flashing a big grin and thumbs-up while he and the clueless first lady posed for a photo with a two-monthold baby orphaned a few days earlier when his parents were gunned down by a mass murderer quoting Trump’s hateful anti-immigrant rhetoric. It was a shameless moment P.T. Barnum would have been proud of.
Ah, but here’s the rub. And here’s something to consider. No matter how outrageous, phony or untrustworthy, both P.T. Barnum in his day, and Donald Trump in his, proved extremely popular. Why? Because so many people knew they were charlatans, yet still found them immensely entertaining. They didn’t care if they were being fed a pack of lies. It was the “Bearded Lady” then, it’s “Crooked Hillary” today. People were more than willing to be bamboozled, lied to, and taken advantage of, as long as they were having a good time in the process.
Barnum may or may not have said it, but it’s still true: “There’s a sucker born every minute.” There is no difference between the crowds in 1842 going to see P.T. Barnum’s fake mermaid and the crowds today flocking to a Donald Trump campaign rally. The truth means nothing to them. They just want to have fun.
That says a lot about the American people and raises, perhaps, the most important question facing voters in 2020: It’s OK to have a disgusting, self-dealing, shameless, immoral, and untrustworthy flimflam artist as a circus impresario. But is that really what we want as president of the United States?