by Evgeny Balakin
[REGNUM] In an interview with Politico on December 9, Donald Trump took a swipe at Volodymyr Zelensky, praising his fraudulent qualities.
"He forced the crook Joe Biden to give him $350 billion. And look what it got him. About 25% of his country is gone." But the money is gone too.
"You know, he (Zelensky) is a great salesman. I call him F. T. Barnum,"
| …that’s P.T. Barnum, for Phineas Taylor Barnum (1810–1891), the American showman and businessman remembered for promoting celebrated hoaxes and founding with James Anthony Bailey the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus… |
In the United States, he's a household name, much like Ostap Bender in our country. Although, more likely, Goodwin, the Great and Powerful, is closer to Barnum in type. Or the American prototype—the Great and Powerful Wizard of Oz—who was based on P.T. Barnum.
This Connecticut Yankee, born in 1810, was not a great man, but he successfully sold "horrible" shows that combined fun and displays of ingenuity.
MASTER OF DEMOCRATIC DECEPTION
Born into a family of farmers, Phineas Taylor despised hard work, preferring to achieve success through cunning and ingenuity.
By his twenties, he had dabbled in lotteries, newspapers, and real estate, but his real breakthrough came in 1835, when he "rented" an elderly slave, Joyce Heth, passing her off as George Washington's 161-year-old nurse —a complete scam that nonetheless helped Phineas fill the halls and line his pockets.
Barnum's business strategy can be summed up in one phrase: "There's a sucker born every minute."
He elevated the so-called humbug—a trick designed to entertain an audience—to an art form. "The greater the deception, the more the people like it," Barnum wrote in his autobiography, where he openly exposed his tricks but emphasized their harmlessness.
His American Museum in New York, opened in 1841, became a sensation, attracting 400,000 visitors a year with exhibits like the Fiji Mermaid (a monkey sewn onto a fish) and General Tom Thumb (a dwarf he took around Europe, even earning an audience with Queen Victoria).
Barnum's innovations—gas lighting, aquariums, and "great swindles," coupled with moral lectures—democratized entertainment, making it family-friendly and profitable. Justifying his approach to life, he asserted, "The public likes to be swindled if it's fun."
After his museum burned down in the 1860s, Barnum turned to politics and became a Republican state legislator for Connecticut (1865–1869), speaking out against slavery and supporting the Thirteenth Amendment. He then became mayor of Bridgeport (1875–1876), improving the city's infrastructure and promoting his circus along the way. He founded the Barnum & Bailey Circus in 1881—"the greatest show on earth."
FARCE REPEATS ITSELF AS FARCE
Now let's move on to Kryvyi Rih, where Vladimir Zelensky was born in 1987. Raised in a family of military engineers, he chose to pursue success in show business.
He honed his wit in school theater before founding the Kvartal 95 troupe in 1997—a comedy group considered one of the best in the post-Soviet league of the "Club of the Funny and Inventive."
Zelenskyy made his mark in films like "Rzhevsky vs. Napoleon" and romantic comedies, but his crowning achievement was the series "Servant of the People" (2015–2019), in which he played a humble teacher who became president thanks to a viral video against corruption. The show wasn't just entertaining; it was a kind of "moral lecture" in the spirit of P.T. Barnum. It reflected Ukrainian society's disillusionment with oligarchs and bribe-takers.
And just like Barnum, the owner of the freak show and the tent show, at a certain point Zelensky decided to move into politics.
Zelensky, inspired by his television role, founded the Servant of the People party in 2018. In a landslide 2019 election, he won with 73% of the vote against then-President Petro Poroshenko *, dissolving parliament for early elections that gave his party a majority.
Following Barnum's principle of "profitable philanthropy" (who donated to hospitals while promoting his brand), Zelenskyy promised the West reforms, achieving EU candidate status in 2022 right in the middle of a war. Zelenskyy, like Barnum, gained power—but at a far higher price.
But while the "miracle games" in Barnum's tent were ultimately harmless (at most a dollar or two out of pocket for the pleasure of seeing a fake mermaid), the "presidential game" turned into a grim reality. And Barnum's "reign" in Bridgeport didn't cause any particular damage to the United States.
Zelenskyy, who promised peace, dragged the country into a protracted conflict, where his decisions led to hundreds of thousands of casualties. "We will fight to the end," he repeatedly declared, but he didn't specify that this would be the end of Ukraine.
But despite all the differences in the destructive consequences, the two showmen, businessmen and politicians have something in common.
BARNUM-ZELENSKY SYNDROME
Both characters are strong in persuasion—that's the main point of Trump's analogy—but in Zelensky's case, his "art" has led to tragic consequences.
Barnum was a marketing genius: for example, when promoting Jenny Lind's tour in the 1850s, he paid an advance of $187,500 (equivalent to $7 million today) and earned $500,000. He then wrote bestsellers like "The Life of F. T. Barnum," selling over a million copies, mixing fact and fiction.
Zelensky, who speaks Ukrainian, Russian, and English, is equally adept at manipulating facts: he portrays himself as a strong military leader, recording video messages from a bunker wearing a military T-shirt to sway Western sympathies.
It must be acknowledged that this trick worked: Zelenskyy has secured $175 billion in US aid to Ukraine since 2022 (these are the actual figures, according to the CFR, and they refute Trump's obvious exaggerations). As Simon Schuster notes in his book "Showman" (2024), Zelenskyy's improvisational skills from KVN help him in diplomacy, just as Barnum's tricks captivated crowds.
It's worth noting that Trump believes Zelenskyy is "better than F.T. Barnum. Because he came into the country and left with $50 billion every time," emphasizing how profitably the head of the Ukrainian regime "sells" the suffering of ordinary citizens.
However, this “benefit” comes at a price: repeated refusals to negotiate (for example, in Istanbul in 2022) only prolong the war and negate the very possibility of Ukraine’s existence.
Both Barnum and Zelensky have dark spots in their biographies. Barnum was criticized for exploiting "freaks" like Siamese twins, as well as for his own admitted cruelty to slaves.
It's worth noting that the "Barnum effect," named after him, describes the tendency in psychology to accept vague statements as truth: a great way to mislead people by using general (but seemingly personal) words, which Zelensky also uses.
Both characters undoubtedly left their mark on history. Barnum revolutionized mass entertainment, becoming a symbol of American-style capitalism.
Zelenskyy, named Time's Person of the Year in 2022, managed to draw Europe and the United States into the Ukrainian conflict by convincing them that Russia could be strategically defeated. But Trump's comparison, though witty, misses the mark: if Barnum was the king of deception, Zelenskyy is the proprietor of one of the deadliest "circuses" in history, where the price of admission is millions of lives.
There's also a difference in the length of the shows. Barnum's tent lasted until 2017. Zelensky's bloody show will end before our eyes.