President P.T. Barnum
Ignore The Greatest Showman, Barnum was a special type of entertainer, one that no American should aspire to be today. However, that's exactly what we have in the White House.
In fourth grade, we were asked to write an essay about our experience going to the circus. The Great State Fair of—Oklahoma1 often included the big top spectacle. Here’s the kicker: I never went to the circus. I had seen images of elephants, lions, tigers, acrobats, and even clowns in all the dazzling ads2.
Luck would have it that the week after the assignment my mom received free tickets to the circus from her office. That weekend we shipped off to the fair, walked our way through the midway and car show, navigating past the barns with prized pigs, goats, cows and sheep, and found ourselves inside the arena. I sat in awe at the trapeze acts, the elephants climbing on tiny platforms, tigers jumping through fire rings, and even the way they used gators to excited and scare the audience down on the ground floor.
As I aged into adulthood, the thrill of the circus diminished. But I’m cognizant that for many, the circus is still where it’s at. It’s the entertainment that delights them, much like some folks are Disney fanatics and others love Star Wars3, Six Flags, Peanuts, their sports teams, and so on and so forth. That is what the originator of the “Greatest Show on Earth” learned more than 150 years ago, P.T. Barnum, realized when he started selling spectacles.
If your only references to this man is “The Greatest Showman” and the misatribution of “There’s a sucker born every minute,” then nothing that follows will make sense.
Barnum wasn’t a genius so much as he understood people better than most. He could see how the sleight of hand and the power of persuasion could enthrall audiences all over the world. While this did result in a partnership with Jim Bailey to create half of what would eventually be the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus, it started with little tricks and traumas. Bodies parts fused to transform into a mermaid and a child who stopped growing became an English folklore character come to life4. Barnum had no qualms about parading the extraordinary and the clearly manufactured, especially because it became a source of massive revenue.
What made this worse is that it all started in the most inhumane way. It wasn’t a mermaid or little person, it wasn’t a woman with facial hair that could sing, or a body contortionist. Barnum got his start by buying and showcasing a blind, Black woman and telling everyone that she was George Washington’s wet nurse5, making her 161 years old. Joice Heth brought in $1,500 a week for the young showman. That’s more than $46,000 weekly today, or just under $1.3 million during the seven-month spectacle. She saw none of that money because Barnum never emancipated her, enslaved by the future ringmaster who never thought about the people in his act, just as he didn’t think about the people who bought tickets to see the act. I know this because the people clamoured for an autopsy after Heth passed away, which he agreed to so he could charge a viewing fee to anyone who wanted. When the doctor said the woman died at half the age, Barnum didn’t blink an eye, claimed the body was a double and that Heth was still alive and touring in Europe.
Now, all of this isn’t to necessarily trash P.T. Barnum, or even tell people not to watch The Greatest Showman6. Rather, it’s to help identify what’s going on in this White House.
For a long time, we’ve been talking about the President as if he is some authoritarian who is hell bent on moulding the country in his image. But that gives too much credit to what’s really going on. Over the past 10 years, this man has shifted from pretending to be in real estate to cashing on his name, image, and likeness as if he is some college athlete starting for Alabama7. The NY Times, everyone’s “favorite” paper, did an extensive dive into how he’s transformed his name into a cash cow, selling everything from Bibles to shoes and now cryptocurrency. Nevermind that, as president, he’s both the regulator and beneficiary.
What’s telling in it, though, is that until he secured the nomination last year, this man was near insolvency. Not on the brink, mind you, but at the point where the company would have had to start selling properties to pay for costs. He would’ve passed away with enough money in the bank to pay for the gilded coffin I have no doubt he’s already envisioned that will lower into the grave underneath a statue of his likeness at the presidential library, which will look just as gaudy as everything else he designs.
So what’s a guy going to do when he doesn’t have enough to cover the costs of his NYC tower and facing hundreds of millions in legal decisions against him? He starts hawking his name around to everything. He tells people it’s the best brand in the world. And, as he becomes president for a second term, the Grifter-in-Chief uses the skills he’s adapted to promote the amazing work he’s done, all for the benefit of his people. Ignore that he’s spent more money than the previous administration, look past that his DOGE efforts cost more money than it purported to save, forget that he’s cutting taxes that disproportionately benefits the richest Americans and either paying for it with massive cuts to the support the poorest of the poor desperately need to survive or just kicking the debt can down the road.
It’s the ultimate showman experience: pretend everything is great, even when it’s not. Look at what happened in LA. The White House had the audacity to say the city couldn’t handle a so-called riot—which was more a violent protest that got out of hand and maybe encompassed one zip code out of the dozens that exist in that town. That’s like scheduling the Chicago Cubs to play your local Little League team. It’s overkill. But it’s the kind of spectacle this President knows his audience will buy.
And I’m not trashing his supporters. It’s absolutely human to buy into the entertainment without realizing you are being taken. And, because we’re human, it’s tough to admit that we’re wrong about something. Just reading that sentence will make some of his ardent supporters dig in and say I’m delusional to even think he’s wrong. Well, I hate to break it to you, but he’ll say anything to sound like he’s right. It’s the art of the lie: he has to constantly seem right and say anything and everything to keep the mark (the voter, ticket buyer, television audience) glued to his form of entertainment.
Barnum sold people tickets to an autopsy that proved he lied and he moved the story to justify taking people’s money by saying the woman HE OWNED IN SLAVERY had travelled to Europe as a continuation of his show. No one thought to question how that is possible since the second she arrived in Europe, she’d be a free woman, nor that the body lying before them looked exactly like Heth.
This President has continually done the same thing. Ignore intelligence assessments that say Iran’s nuclear program wasn’t destroyed, listen to me, your best friend who happens to be president and knows more than everyone when I say that Iran’s program was obliterated. Now enjoy your freedom and don’t forget to buy my new scent for men and women8 at a low price of $249.
There is no low he’s willing to go to ensure that his supporters continue to back him, despite the countdown on his administration ticking ever closer to the inevitable end. He knows there is a finite time before people stop buying new products with his mug emblazoned everywhere and move on to the next GOP leader. We’ll see how little his support has legs when the midterm elections come about. His endorsements will push fringe candidates past the primaries, but in competitive districts, that name will sink most Republicans, leading to a more competitive midterm season than any Democrat deserves9.
Basically, the President is the reincarnation of P.T. Barnum, not Adolf Hitler. It’s not diminishing how dangerous he is—I think he’s more dangerous as an entertainer than a genius authoritarian—but it’s shedding light into how frustrating every step of the way has become. His need for adoration and money allows the more dangerous minds to run the White House, like Stephen Miller and the former DOGE-in-Chief Elon Musk. It means that incompetent people like RFK, Jr., and Krisi Noem get to destroy our government programs under the guise of making their boss look great.
In short, we’ve got a circus in Washington, D.C., and the ringmaster is counting the bills as people come in to watch the spectacle, espeically all of those damned elephants trampling over what used to be a government.
You have to sign it to understand the em dash.
Before the concept of animal cruelty at the circus became a thing.
Disney being the House of Mouse, Star Wars being the world of Jedis and Siths since the two are owned by the same massive corporation.
General Tom Thumb.
The actual language used is pretty awful so I’m not repeating. I’m not going to link to anything about the advertising, because it’s inhumane. But I will say Joice Heth deserved more than she received.
The soundtrack slaps.
And as an OU alum who experienced the 2000 national championship as an undergrad, it hurts to say all of that last phrase.
Seriously, they need to figure out their message and get to work because the party is a mess, much like the Republicans were before the famous descent down the golden escalators in 2015.