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Trump as King Henry VIII

Here’s my King Trump …

King Henry the Eighth by Hans Holbein the Younger.

This is Donald Trump as King Henry VIII, from the famous portrait by Hans Holbein the Younger, shown in the image at the right. That Henry was quite the dresser. Notice that Trump, and Henry VIII have tiny hands and a little purse. I may do a series with more famous king portraits as Trump.

One thing that I have to keep in mind as a newspaper cartoonist, is how the color cartoons look when printed in the papers – the cartoons darken up, with heavy details filling in and cyan (or blue) coming in heavy; this is why I lighten and warm up the colors, which is especially apparent in Trump’s brown, furry vest. I also feel I need to make the flesh tones lighter and I’m always getting mail about how I should make Trump look more “orange.” I added a little white feather on Trump’s cap, which wasn’t in the painting – surely this was an oversight by Holbein the Younger as the feather seems to be necessary!

This isn’t the first time for me with Holbein the Younger and Henry VIII. Ten years ago I did a similar take on George W. Bush as Henry VIII in the 2006 cartoon below. I see that I took even more liberties with the king’s outfit in this earlier, cartoonier version.

There are always a lot of cartoons depicting presidents, and presidential candidates as kings (or queens). During the Obama years the few conservative cartoonists enjoyed drawing Obama as a king as their vision of Obama was vain, self-absorbed and autocratic.

At the beginning of the last campaign there were lots of cartoons with Hillary and presumed GOP frontrunner Jeb Bush as dynastic royalty, including this one I did below …

We saw lots of “Trump Card” cartoons, but Trump was always the Joker in those cartoons, not the King.

 

 

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Puppies for Putin

Kids dream of getting a puppy for Christmas and Putin is certainly no different. This year, Putin’s dreams come true with puppy Trump and puppy Secretary of State nominee Rex Tillerson.

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Romney Kisses Trump Butt

Last week’s news was filled with Mitt Romney meeting and having dinner with Donald Trump, after their history of badmouthing each other during the campaign. Romney certainly wants the Secretary of State job, and we may find out if he get the position next week. Trump’s former campaign manager, Kellyanne Conway said today that the job search is expanding, after warning of a popular revolt among Republicans if Romney is the choice.

To be evenhanded (a word seldom applied to editorial cartoonists) I should point out that it isn’t unusual for me to draw butt kissing. Here’s Obama kissing the butt of the King of Saudi Arabia.

There’s a lot of butt-kissing to go around these days.

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Trump and the Swamp

Donald Trump promised to “drain the swamp” in Washington, implying that he would be bringing new faces into the administration that were not “politics as usual.” So far, Trump’s picks look like standard politicians Republican fare, straight from the swamp.

Swamp
I love the look of the Creature from the Black Lagoon. Swamp Thing? Not so much.

There have also been reports about Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, nixing choices that are close to New Jersey Governor, Chris Christie, who put Kushner’s father in jail back when Christie was a prosecutor.

I was thinking of the typical swamp cabinet candidate and I thought of the “Swamp Thing” – but when I looked, I realized that what I really had in mind was the “Creature from the Black Lagoon” which has a classic 1950’s B-movie look. The Swamp Thing just didn’t make the cut. That’s the Creature from the Black Lagoon in the photo at the right. And my cartoon is below.

I think the cartoonists will find their Trump-sea-legs soon. If not, we’re in for four (or eight) years of lousy Trump-Monster cartoons – that is, Trump as the monster, which has grown tiresome. One bright spot is Jared Kushner and Trump’s kids, who look like they will be cartoon characters on my palette in coming years. They are wonderful characters!

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Democrat Guernica

There is horror and anguish in the ranks of the Democratic Party these days. Pablo Picasso’s Guernica is probably the best known visual icon for horror and anguish.

Here’s a detail …

democratguernicadetail

Eight years ago I drew a similar cartoon when Democrats won the presidency and congress – to the horror of Republicans.

I’ve had the GOP version up as the top image on my Facebook page for years, And I’ve gotten lots of complaints about it, usually from very literal conservatives who write things like, “Guernica is about the Spanish civil war – it has nothing to do with Republicans!” I also got lots of criticism from conservatives who wanted to point out that I’m not as good an artist as Pablo Picasso. Here’s an image of the real “Guernica.”

guernica750

This David Fitzsimmons oldie about George W. Bush painting Iraq is a nice one.

fitzsimmons-guernica

Worldwide cartoonists like to use flags in their cartoons – the problem is that the American audience doesn’t know their flags. Here’s our Greek cartoonist, Michael Kountouris drawing a combination of the Syrian flag and Guernica.

Here’s my Cuban cartoonist friend in Mexico, Angel Boligan, with Violence in Video Games …

Here’s another nice one from Boligan, simply titled, “Insurance.”

boligan2-guernica

Gotta love Guernica.

 

 

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Ceiling of Support – and Rembrandt

With election day two days away, as pools tighten up, it still looks like Donald Trump is bumping his head on a hard ceiling of support. I suppose this cartoon could be a post-mortem to run on Wednesday, after Hillary wins. I expect to get a blast of cartoons predicting the outcome for newspaper who need a quick option when the election results come in on Tuesday night; some cartoonists will surely draw different versions of different outcomes – I’m working on that now.

This cartoon is inspired by another cartoon I drew some years ago about the debt ceiling, with a Republican elephant. (I like pogo sticks.)

Debt ceilings, ceilings of support – those darn ceilings keep coming back to bite Republicans.

Here’s another oldie that I updated in anticipation of Hillary winning the election. I drew this one in 2012 about the “Republican Autopsy” after Mitt Romney’s defeat. I draw just like Rembrandt, huh?  Things don’t change much.

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E-mail Ouch!

FBI Director Comey threw an ugly curveball at Hillary last week when he re-opened the investigation into her e-mails. I love to draw people throwing ugly curveballs.

Yes, I know I should have done a live-stream video of this one. I’ve been taking a bit of a cold-infused vacation from my video regimen. I’ll start up again soon. Really.

I drew another cartoon about the Russians and Wikileaks that I didn’t color because the Comey investigation news came out as I was starting to color the cartoon; I thought the new story drowned Wikileaks out. Here’s my Russian general that, I would guess, few readers will see.

 

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Trump Accepting the Election Results

After the third debate, the media has been agog about Trump’s refusal to say that he will accept the results of the election. I suppose the threat is that an angry army of Trumpettes across America will indignantly raise more trouble than usual.

I put together a show of Statue of Liberty cartoons for the cartoonists convention in St Just le Martel, France a couple of weeks ago. Liberty represents our acceptance of immigrants along with our general values, our constitution and our patriotic vision of a good, law abiding America – and sometimes she delivers bitter bites. Gotta love Liberty.

Hey, sorry, I didn’t do a video of this one. I’ve had a cold, and nobody wants to see me sniffling, sneezing and coughing my way through a video. I’ll start again soon. Really.

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Trump’s Stinky Quote

I was away at the cartoonists convention in France when Trump’s Access Hollywood tape came out. It always happens that when I’m away I really want to draw a cartoon! So, excuse this one being late, but it is still what everyone is talking about.

Does this fart-face cartoon look familiar? Remember my entry in Iran’s Holocaust Cartoon Contest a while back?

I liked this cartoon, and those darn Iranian folks didn’t choose to include it in their exhibition, so there weren’t many people who saw it – the perfect excuse to dust off this classic for Donald Trump!

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Presidential Debate Garbage

I’ve been hearing a lot about how Hillary Clinton won the first presidential debate, but it seemed to me that there was plenty of garbage and spin from each candidate, so I drew this …

I could call it “trash talking.” I live tweeted during the debate and got a lot of response on Twitter (@dcagle). I should do that more often. Maybe next time.

I notice that the stage at the debate was the same stage they used for presidential debates years ago. I suppose it packs up nicely and keeps well in storage. I don’t see much reason for that strange eagle logo, but I wanted to put them on the right stage so that the only change was their garbage can lecterns. I don’t usually do cartoons with dark backgrounds. Maybe I’m in a rut.

We didn’t see much of them on the stage. Almost all of the debate took place on a split screen, which adjusted for Donald Trump’s height advantage. I understand that the taller candidate almost always wins the election. Also, the zoomed closer on Hillary to make her head bigger and they turned down the color saturation on Trump, to make him look less orange. I love stagecraft.

Everyone is talking about the bait Hillary used to lure Trump into traps, and how Trump jumped to take the bait each time. I suppose that is interesting, but it struck me that this debate didn’t change many minds – fans of each candidate likely thought their own candidate won and I didn’t see anything new – just the same old garbage.

Want to see me drawing this cartoon in real time? Check it out below …

And watch me color the cartoon in the next video …