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Trump and Refugees

The media is energized by the “ban” on seven Muslim countries: Yemen, Somalia, Sudan, Libya, Iran, Iraq and Syria. Those are seven nasty places. I’d like to see a ban on refugees from all nasty places without regard to a religious test. There are lots more nasty places to add to this list.

Today’s cartoon is an upgrade to an oldie that I drew a couple of years ago.

Here’s the original, drawn when the GOP was opposing President Obama’s plans to welcome thousands of Syrian refugees.

My starting point for this one is this great cartoon from our Greek Cagle Cartoonist, Michael Kountouris, about the European Union.

 

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USA vs Mexico

Sorry to be away from doing the videos for so long! Yesterday I streamed my process drawing this one and you can see the whole thing in real time in the YouTube videos below. Here’s the angry face-off between the Trump-USA and Mexican eagles.

The Mexican eagle really should face the other way, but I flipped the bird.

The video below shows me drawing this one, from scratch, on paper, with a pencil.

In the next video I’m coloring the cartoon in Photoshop …

Yes! The beard is gone for the foreseeable future! (I know that is shocking – it’s still me … really.)

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Mexico Flips Us the Bird

I drew this Mexican flag, “flipping the bird” cartoon eleven years ago when the Mexican government was distributing brochures they created to give advice to Mexicans who were hiking across dangerous, unprotected border areas (they should bring a hat and lots of water to drink).

Today the Mexican public is heaping accolades on their unpopular president, Enrique Peña Nieto; maybe this is just what Peña Nieto needs.

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Pussyhats

On Saturday, the day after President Trump’s inauguration, we’ll see the Women’s March on Washington where the protest fashion of the day is “Pussyhats.” The hats are based on Trump Access Hollywood comments about “grabbing women by the pussy.” My wife is busy knitting pussyhats for herself and my daughter.

Since Liberty and Justice are the most important women in government, they should march with Pussyhats too. The idea of knitting as a protest makes me smile.

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Trump Christmas

Trump will have a nice Christmas morning!

This Christmas morning scene is something I bring back every four or five years. Here’s an oldie from a Christmas when the GOP was suffering from some Obama successes …


Here’s one from when Obama was eager to get Obamacare through congress, back in 2009.

The next one is from back in 2001 – before I had settled on a good caricature of George W. Bush, when 9/11 was still fresh and all the talk was about the hunt for Osama Bin Ladin.

Notice that there are thick, cathode ray TVs in W’s holiday stash? This cartoon is fifteen years old. Times have changed.

Gotta love Christmas morning!

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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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My TRUMP WINS Correction!

Yesterday, election day, I posted a cartoon titled “Hillary Wins” as I was swept along with the conventional wisdom that Hillary’s lead in the polls would hold through the election. Here’s my correction!

Compare this to the original “Hillary Wins” cartoon below. Hillary is a blue dragon now. I gave her dead “X eyes” replacing the bloody sword, so that she wouldn’t have “blood coming out of her whatever.”

I had a lot of good company among my cartoonist colleagues – in fact, we faced a bit of a crisis this morning as no cartoonists had drawn Trump Wins cartoons in advance – but the Trump cartoons have been pouring in today. Interestingly, the cartoons today don’t look much different than the trump name-calling cartoons we’ve been getting for the last year. I suspect this is what the next four cartoon years will look like. Check out Cagle.com for the newest Trump cartoons!

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Hillary Wins!

Editorial cartoonists often draw election day cartoons that predict a winner in advance, so that editors have a cartoon ready when the news breaks on election night. Here’s mine.

linglewins320wdragonAlmost twenty years ago I was just switching careers from being a Muppet and advertising cartoonist to being a political cartoonist and I was drawing local, Hawaii state cartoons for the Midweek newspaper. There was a big election for governor between the incumbent Ben Cayetano and Linda Lingle. The polls showed that Lingle would win and my cartoon deadline was the Monday before election day, so I drew this Lingle wins cartoon and the paper went to press on it’s regular schedule, sampling that single would win.

320wcayetanowinsdragon

 

 

All the predictions were wrong and Cayetano won (Lingle won the governor’s seat in a later election). I got a frantic call from the Midweek editor, Don Chapman, on Wednesday – they had to throw out the papers that were already printed and set to be delivered on Wednesday (perhaps now they are collectors items) and they were holding the presses for me to draw an emergency “Cayetano Wins” cartoon immediately. I drew the emergency cartoon at the left as fast as I could.

Now that I don’t have a newspaper home I don’t think anyone will be gambling on my Hillary Wins cartoon for tomorrows editions. I was going to draw a Trump Wins cartoon with the characters switching places. Maybe I’ll scramble to draw a Trump Wins cartoon late tonight.

No. I’m too lazy.

 

 

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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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Go Vote!

Here’s a generic, voting day cartoon. I know the other cartoonists are in a fever pitch over the last days of the campaign season – but I’m weary of it. The Trump name-calling cartoons continue to flood in with Hillary bashing taking a back seat. I’m looking forward to a time when there are more topics for cartoonists who might chime in with different opinions.

And I miss my donkeys and elephants. Since the Republicans have fractured, and an anti-Trump cartoon isn’t necessarily anti-Republican or anti-conservative, the poor elephant has suffered from a lack of clear direction. I miss my single minded elephant.

Videos will come back. I promise.