“Clowns are the pegs on which the circus is hung,” quipped legendary showman and shyster P. T. Barnum. Given the goings-on at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland last week, you’d be forgiven for thinking the Republican ringmasters have been reading Barnum’s book.
All those bright signs, silly hats, the noise, the balloons. There was a last push by #NeverTrump for control of the floor and the party. There was Sheriff David A. Clarke Jr.’s disparaging of Black Lives Matter and issuing subsequent bizarre remarks on the acquittal of the Baltimore Police Department in the killing of Freddie Gray. Then there was Trump’s sensational entrance — equal parts Alfred Hitchcock and Ed Sullivan — followed by Melania Trump’s plagiarized speech. For one full day, it may just have been the greatest show on earth.
Politics has always involved some element of theater, but it can be hard to tell the wit of the man credited with The Art of the Deal from that of the man who wrote The Art of Money Getting (yes, those are two separate people). See if you can tell who said what in the following quiz.
Quiz: Who Said It—D. J. Trump or P. T. Barnum?
1. “If it can’t be fun, what’s the point?”
2. “Nobody ever lost a dollar by underestimating the taste of the American public.”
3. “I’ve always felt that a lot of modern art is a con and that the most successful painters are often better salesmen and promoters than they are artists.”
4. “I aim very high, and then I just keep pushing and pushing and pushing to get what I’m after.”
5. “Every crowd has a silver lining.”
6. “One of the problems when you become successful is that jealousy and envy inevitably follow.”
7. “Young men starting in life should avoid running into debt. There is scarcely anything that drags a person down like debt. Debt robs a man of his self-respect and makes him almost despise himself.”
8. “The possession of a perfect knowledge of your business is an absolute necessity in order to insure success.”
9. “The most important thing in life is to love what you’re doing, because that’s the only way you’ll ever be really good at it.”
10. “Good publicity is preferable to bad, but from a bottom-line perspective, bad publicity is sometimes better than no publicity at all. Controversy, in short, sells.”
11. “I don’t care what they say about me—just make sure they spell my name right!”
12. “I never liked to work—I mean manual work.”
13. “I’ve read hundreds of books about China over the decades. I know the Chinese. I’ve made a lot of money with the Chinese. I understand the Chinese mind.”
14. “Unless a man enters upon the vocation intended for him by nature, and best suited to his peculiar genius, he cannot succeed.”
15. “I will be so good at the military your head will spin.”
16. “The foundation of success in life is good health.”
17. “We have nobody in Washington that sits back and says, ‘You’re not going to raise that fucking price.’”
18. “Well, someone’s doing the raping, Don! I mean, somebody’s doing it. Who’s doing the raping? Who’s doing the raping?”
(Scroll down for the answer key)
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Answers:
- Trump
- Barnum
- Trump
- Trump
- Barnum
- Trump
- Barnum
- Barnum
- Trump
- Trump
- Barnum
- Barnum
- Trump
- Barnum
- Trump
- Barnum
- Trump
- Trump
Illustration by Keith A. Spencer, adapted from photos by Michael Vadon / Matthew Nelson / Sam Howzit.
