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Republicans: Repeal and Replace!

The Democrats worked on passing Obamacare for a year and we got lots of cartoons with the medical symbol, the caduseus. Republicans don’t have so much time to plan, they are swallowing healthcare whole without chewing – and it is caduceus time all over again! Here’s my Republican healthcare debate cartoon …

I drew this as a live-stream on Twitch. See me in the video below as I start with a blank sheet of paper and no layout in mind.

The next video show me coloring this one, along with tomorrow’s cartoon about Trump and Twitter …

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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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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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Cagle’s 2016 Year in Review

Here’s my year in review! The year started off with Donald Trump knocking off his opponents one by one, in a big Republican field.


Trump attacked his fiercest rival, Ted Cruz, for being born in Canada, arguing that he was not “native born” and constitutionally ineligible to be president.

Trump had a famous, short-lived feud with Fox News host Megyn Kelly, which led him to boycott a presidential debate that was sponsored by Fox News. Trump’s absence seemed to amount to a victory for him.

Bernie Sanders started out strong and threatened to steal the Democratic nomination from Hillary Clinton.

The Democratic establishment couldn’t grasp why young women voters rejected Hillary and flocked to Bernie.

Bernie hung on until the end – Hillary just couldn’t put him away.

Supreme Court justice Antonin Scalia died, and the Republicans would not allow a vote for Obama’s nominee for nine months, in the hope that a Republican would win the election.

The terrible Zika virus spread north from South America.


Ted Cruz and John Kasich tried teaming up for a last ditch effort to derail Trump. It didn’t work.

Trump won the Republican party nomination for president – a concept that many Republicans found difficult to accept.

Trump’s fashion model wife, Melania, gave a speech at the GOP convention that seemed to match a speech by Michelle Obama.

Trump attacked a Muslim “Gold Star Family” that spoke against him at the Democratic Convention.

The media was obsessed with Trump, giving him lots of costly air time – but after he won the GOP nomination, the media turned on Trump and Trump’s support surprised all of the pundits.

Many Republicans couldn’t bring themselves to support their new nominee.

The Party of Lincoln was horrified.

“Pay to Play” allegations about the Clinton Foundation stung Hillary.

In other news, Civil War freedom fighter Harriet Tubman was selected to grace the $20.00 bill, kicking slave plantation owner Andrew Jackson off.

Great Britain voted for “Brexit” – an exit from the European Union.

Highly publicized, and unjustifiable police shootings led to attacks on police and nationwide demonstrations.

Greedy drug companies raised priced and screwed customers.

The Summer Olympics were dominated by news of the success of the American swim team, and then by news of the American swimmers vandalizing a bathroom and lying about it.

The Trump vs. Clinton campaign was possible the ugliest presidential contest ever.

Trump made a surprise visit to meet the president of Mexico – to the horror of Mexicans.

Trump seemed to be fond of Russia’s Vladimir Putin, as the Russians hacked the Democratic party boosting Trumps campaign by releasing embarrassing emails through their proxy, Wikileaks.

The race was tight, focusing on swing-states.

Hate groups endorsed Trump – and I heard from many of them by e-mail.

Trump accused Hillary of being too sick to be president.

The presidential debates drew the biggest audiences ever.

“Access Hollywood” recordings of Trump bragging about sexual assaults dominated the headlines.

Trump claimed that the election was “rigged” against him, suggesting that he wouldn’t “accept” the election results if Hillary were to win.

Days before the election, FBI Director James Comey reopened the e-mail investigation of Hillary, an event that Hillary’s supporters believe cost her the election.

Trump won!

Half the nation was shocked.

The election was a Democrat apocalypse.

Trump’s transition was just as crazy as his campaign, with untraditional cabinet picks of generals and billionaires who seem to defy his promise to “drain the swamp.”

 

 

 

 

 

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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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Trump Victory HORROR!

From my perch in blue California the horror at Trump’s election is everywhere, from middle and high schools emptying each days as the kids protest and as protesters block the 101 freeway near here. There is a lot of wailing and gnashing of teeth.

trump-horror750

People are asking me what to expect from editorial cartoons in the Trump years. I suspect that we’ll be in for four years of the same kind of cartoons we saw in the campaign. We’ll certainly see Trump hair placed on every imaginable monument and metaphor. The Trump reaction cartoons have been pouring in, with some obvious Yahtzees like Trump hair on the world globe. There are lots of cartoons showing the White House as a skyscraper or with Trump signage. And lots of Trump monsters – in facts a lot of the Trump victory response cartoons are just like the Trump bashing cartoons we saw during the campaign. It isn’t hard to predict that this will never end. That said, there are some great ones on Cagle.com! Here are a few that I enjoyed that came in today and yesterday …

Our most conservative cartoonist, Sean Delonas drew this Trump protester cartoon that made me laugh. (The dog is funny.)

This Bagley cartoon is wordy fun.

This Sack cartoon made me laugh out loud.

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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.