ABSTRACT
This chapter aims to compare the discourses of Donald Trump the campaigner and P. T. Barnum the showman, particularly as they used freakishness to gain popularity. It focuses on the scholarship of Cameroonian political theorist Achille Mbembe, and investigates analogies between the presidential Trump and the figural postcolonial autocrat. Scrutinizing the Barnum-Trump analogy less biographically and more rhetorically opens further interpretive possibilities. South African comedian Trevor Noah, the host of Comedy Central’s Daily Show, popularized the analogy of Trump to postcolonial autocrats. The analogy to the autocrat who expects unquestioning obedience to his dictates highlights the material effects of political power even further. The freakish was the physically excessive: the very small, the very large, the ancient, the young, the very black, the very white. Donald Trump’s rhetorical representations of the freakish vary from Barnum’s, although a comparison with Barnum’s exhibitions of human beings might illuminate Trump’s possession of the Miss Universe Pageant.
