THE HUCKSTER IS A SUCKER / PROJECT SYNDICATE

The Huckster Is a Sucker

The American stereotype that US President Donald Trump most resembles is the showman in a loud suit who knows how to manipulate and fleece the suckers. In Alaska, Russian President Vladimir Putin exposed the flipside to the huckster’s conviction that everything and everyone has a price: a dangerous naivete.

Ian Buruma

NEW YORK – A photograph of President Donald Trump in the White House proudly showing off his collection of MAGA (“Make America Great Again”) caps to the European leaders who had hastily assembled for Ukraine peace talks raised, once again, the question of what makes this peculiar man tick. 

Unlike his campaign posters and official portrait showing a strongman with a Churchillian scowl, this image suggested a different and very American stereotype: the flashy businessman who brags about his wealth and shows pictures of his kids to strangers.

Trump’s critics often claim that he embodies the worst aspects of American culture: the vulgar ostentation, the love of violence, the smug ignorance, the braggadocio – the best, the greatest, the MOST BEAUTIFUL SHOW ON EARTH!!!

There is something to this. 

But darker forces lurk beneath Trump’s showmanship.

The man is not ideological. 

Despite his prejudices, he isn’t driven by firm political convictions.

Ideas and beliefs are a way to gain power and can be discarded when no longer useful. 

To see Trump as a fascist is to imagine a political coherence that simply isn’t there.

In some ways, the Trump administration resembles a Mafia operation. 

Forcing elite law firms and universities to hand over vast sums of money to avoid trouble is a classic shakedown. 

But unlike Trump, most Mafia dons tend to stay behind the scenes and shun attention. 

Their business is to exploit and corrupt existing institutions, not to topple them.

The American stereotype that Trump most resembles is the huckster, the carnival barker, the showman in a loud suit who knows how to manipulate and fleece the suckers. 

As P.T. Barnum, the nineteenth-century businessman, politician, con artist, and founder of the famous Barnum and Bailey Circus, is often credited with saying, “There’s a sucker born every minute.”

From this perspective, the world is full of gullible losers who are only too willing to be deceived by promises of a quick buck, instant celebrity, or a beautiful future. 

Nothing frightens the huckster more than being taken for a sucker himself. 

This is one of the dominant themes underlying Trump’s career: the idea that other countries are taking the United States for a ride, that foreigners are laughing at Americans. 

He appears to be projecting his own anxieties onto the country.

There is a link between this attitude and the American Dream. 

That success, fame, and riches remain out of reach for most Americans doesn’t make the prospect of obtaining them any less potent. 

The promise that anyone can “make it” in the US has generated a great deal of positive – as well as negative – energy. 

The related belief that enough money can fix any problem has fed American optimism, as well as a deep cynicism: everyone has their price.

This spirit does not allow for a sense of tragedy, let alone irony. 

Fatalism is for the world-weary countries that people left to seek their fortunes in the US.

But cynicism, and especially the huckster’s conviction that everyone is driven by material greed, has a flipside: a dangerous naivete. Some people are not swayed by promises of riches and fame. 

Such blandishments can be resisted for the best moral reasons, but also for the worst ones. 

After all, people who commit evil often act out of deep conviction, driven by religious or political zeal.

Russian President Vladimir Putin might have been tickled by Trump’s flattery at the Alaska summit, from the red carpet and the ride in the presidential limousine to the warm smiles and the promises of a “great deal.” 

But it almost surely cut no ice with a man whose wealth dwarfs that of Trump, and whose goal of recreating Imperial Russia cannot be met by compromise.

Unlike Trump, Putin is acutely aware of history. 

He wants to be a great Russian leader, following in the footsteps of Joseph Stalin and Peter the Great. 

Putin’s idea of restoring Russian greatness is not just a slogan on a baseball cap, but a real plan to expand its territory and increase its clout, no matter how many lives are lost.

Trump’s mistake is to assume that he and Putin are kindred spirits, even friends. 

He cannot see that Putin is not a huckster. 

At the follow-up meeting with European leaders in the White House, a hot mic caught Trump whispering to French President Emmanuel Macron that Putin “wants to make a deal for me, you understand that? 

As crazy as it sounds.” 

This showed Trump to be a true naïf. 

He is a huckster who believes his own hype, like the gloating man showing off his MAGA hats. 

That makes him a sucker, and Putin, recognizing this, has been playing him for one.

Ian Buruma is the author of numerous books, including Murder in Amsterdam: The Death of Theo Van Gogh and the Limits of Tolerance, Year Zero: A History of 1945, A Tokyo Romance: A Memoir, The Churchill Complex: The Curse of Being Special, From Winston and FDR to Trump and Brexit, The Collaborators: Three Stories of Deception and Survival in World War II, and, most recently, Spinoza: Freedom’s Messiah (Yale University Press, 2024).