Last week the Treasury Secretary, Steve Mnuchin, announced that the “issue” of the new $20 bill featuring Harriet Tubman replacing president Andrew Jackson, would “most likely” not “come up again” until 2026 –or in other words, it is never going to happen. This is no surprise.
President Trump is known to be a big fan of our plantation-slave-master president, Andrew Jackson. Trump keeps a portrait of Jackson in the Oval Office and personally identifies with our seventh president, who, like Trump, rejected and pushed back against an independent judiciary. Jackson is perhaps best known for forcing Native Americans onto reservations West of the Mississippi, through the brutal “Trail of Tears” which ran adjacent to Jackson’s plantation in Tennessee. Jackson reportedly never stepped out into his backyard to observe the wretched sight.
Harriet Tubman was an escaped slave who bravely worked to help countless other slaves escape through the “Underground Railroad,” a network of anti-slavery activists and safe houses. Tubman also served as an armed scout and spy for the US Army during the Civil War.
I decided to draw Trump making his $20 bill decision as a Punch and Judy show. To be fair, Trump isn’t going to lose any votes among his base for this decision, and he isn’t going to get votes from African Americans anyway, so what the heck?
Here’s the cartoon I drew, back in the good old Obama days, when it was first announced that Harriet Tubman would be replacing Andrew Jackson on the $20 bill.