President Donald Trump has likened Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to P.T. Barnum — the fabled American showman and huckster, who popularized the three-ring circus — arguing he’s received billions in American aid and has little to show for it.

In a wide-ranging interview with Politico published Tuesday, Trump telegraphed both admiration for and frustration with Zelensky, saying that he should accept a peace deal to end the war in Ukraine.

“He’s a great salesman,” the president said. “I call him P.T. Barnum. You know who P.T. Barnum was, right?”

“One of the greatest on Earth,” Trump continued. “He could sell any product at any time. That was his expression, I can sell any product at any time. It was true. He said, doesn’t matter whether it works or not…But he’s P.T. Barnum, you know. He… he got, uh, crooked Joe Biden to give him $350 billion. And look what it got … got him. About 25 percent of his country is missing.”

Trump, whose career has centered on personal branding, has been compared to P.T. Barnum in the past and embraced it.

“Look, people call you names,” he told Meet the Press in 2016. “We need P.T. Barnum, a little bit, because we have to build up the image of our country.”

Trump’s latest remarks come as his administration is working to resolve the Ukraine-Russia war, which has raged for nearly four years. Despite months of diplomatic negotiations and high-profile summits, efforts to achieve peace have been unsuccessful.

In late November, the United States’ 28-point peace proposal leaked, triggering alarm among Ukrainian and European leaders, who claimed it ceded to many of Russia's demands, including by forcing Ukraine to give up some of its territory in the east.

Last week, Steve Witkoff, Trump’s special envoy, met with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow to try to narrow the differences. On Monday, Zelensky met with European leaders to discuss the latest U.S.-backed peace plan.

“He’s gotta read the proposal,” Trump said of Zelensky. “He hasn’t read it yet…It would be nice if he would read it. You know, a lot of people are dying.”

https://www.the-independent.com/news/world/americas/us-politics/trump-zelensky-pt-barnum-ukraine-interview-b2881079.html

by BrendanRascius

6 comments

  1. The projection never stops with Trump, holy crap. You really can just take whatever he says about others and apply it to him and know what he really thinks about himself.

  3. I agree. The leader who bears an uncanny resemblance to PT Barnum is President Donald Trump himself. The Founding Fathers and Framers of the Constitution likely are spinning in their graves. The Great statesmen and foreign policy figures of American history likely are shaking their heads and have tears in their eyes as they look down upon Trump and the Trump Administration.

  5. Often one projects its own insecurity and ineptness when evoking otherwise sovereign nation’s leadership. This can and does happen a lot, especially when that one individual lacks the capacity to understand that they themselves run a three-ring circus.

  6. Bruh it got him 75% percent of the country that he saved

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