Perhaps Donald Trump, in his quest to “Make America Great Again,” will reintroduce elephants to the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus.
The Republican presidential front-runner, who’s embraced recent comparisons to P.T. Barnum, founder of the Barnum & Bailey Circus, was quick to react to news Monday that the leading circus plans to phase out its elephant acts by May — nearly two years earlier than it originally intended.
.@RinglingBros is retiring their elephants– the circus will never be the same.
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 11, 2016
According to the Wall Street Journal, all of the elephants currently included in the Circus’ cross-country tour will retire to a 200-acre elephant conservation center in Polk City, Fla., in the coming months. The conservation center is run by Feld Entertainment, which owns the Ringling Bros. Circus and several other traveling shows.
“They’ll be joining the rest of the herd,” Alana Feld, Ringling’s executive vice president, told the Journal.
Trump has previously said he plans to boycott the Ringling Bros. Circus for their removal of the live elephants. He suggested, in a tweet posted last March, that the decision had less to do with “animal rights” and more to do with the circus’ operating costs.
Ringling Brothers is phasing out their elephants. I,for one, will never go again. They probably used the animal rights stuff to reduce costs
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 5, 2015
