Recently I read a review of a book, Barnum: An American Life by Robert Wilson, and this paragraph resonated with me:
“…there appeared a self-promoting blowhard of a man with an easily branded name and a poof of noticeably weird hair. He conjured fortunes and then lost them in spectacular catastrophes. He would eventually catapult himself into political office as a Bible-hugging Christian, committed to reclaiming American virtue. His proper name would become a common noun, a contemptible exclamation and novel profanity. Through it all, he found one way or another to seize the gaze of the media, often by slipping to the press short bits of provocative writing, 
then known as squibs. His name was Phineas T. Barnum.”
Phineas, or P.T. Barnum (1810-1891), was the mastermind behind the world-famous circus spectacle that came to be known as “The Greatest Show on Earth.”
I couldn’t help but think that the reviewer was drawing a parallel between P.T. Barnum and Trump.
Here’s the same paragraph, with slight alterations in bold:
…there appeared a self-promoting blowhard of a man with an easily branded name and a poof of noticeably weird hair. He conjured fortunes and then lost them in spectacular catastrophes. He would eventually catapult himself into political office as a Bible-hugging Christian, committed to reclaiming American virtue. His proper name would become a common noun, a contemptible exclamation and novel profanity. Through it all, he found one way or another to seize the gaze of the media, often by slipping to the press short bits of provocative writing, known as tweets. His name is Donald J. Trump.
This got me wondering if there were other parallels between Barnum and Trump.
Further research lead to an astonishing number of them.
Here are some of the parallels I found:
I Hate Houseguests 