March 23, 2023

Trump and DeSantis are no P.T. Barnums but they do play people for suckers

By Hal Brown

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Link to article in The Independent | HUFFPOST article

With American democracy at stake in the 2024 election the kind of silliness shown above would be a mere sideshow one wouldn't really mind missing if you came late for actual circus.

Some of my fond childhood memories are of my parents taking my sister and me to the the amazing Ringling Brothers Barnum and Bailey circus at Madison Square Garden include not only watching the great clown Emmett Kelly, the trapeze artists, the elephant parade, and lion and tiger tamers but also going to the basement to see the sideshow attractions. I remember my parents paid a quarter for the giant to hand me one on his enormous rings.

This being said, it is hard not to be intrigued by Trump's juvenile but successful obsession with calling his adversaries silly names. However, is Trump the 21st century political P.T. Barnum?

Most people, myself included, didn't know that the man frequently quoted as saying that there's a sucker born every minute (no proof he really said this) was also a politician.

Barnum served two terms in the Connecticut legislature in 1865 as a Republican. He was also the mayor of Bridgeport. (More on his life in politics.)

Even though he switched parties from Democratic to Republican he'd be considered a liberal Democrat today:

Barnum was significantly involved in politics. He mainly focused on race, slavery, and sectionalism in the period leading up to the American Civil War. He opposed the Kansas–Nebraska Act of 1854, which supported slavery, so he left the Democratic Party which endorsed slavery and became part of the new anti-slavery Republican Party.

As a showman he was known for perpetrating hoaxes:

In 1842 Barnum introduced his first major hoax: a creature with the body of a monkey and the tail of a fish known as the "Feejee" mermaid. He leased it from fellow museum owner Moses Kimball of Boston who became his friend, confidant, and collaborator. Barnum justified his hoaxes by saying that they were advertisements to draw attention to the museum. "I don't believe in duping the public", he said, "but I believe in first attracting and then pleasing them."

If you want to call him a liar rather than a hoaxer one could compare him to Trump and DeSantis. Barnum would certainly make a better president than either of these two.