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Trump, Jackson, Tubman, Punch and Judy!

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.

 

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Tubman Boots Andrew Jackson off of the $20 Bill!

I think Harriet Tubman was a good choice for the $20 bill. I drew her booting President Andrew Jackson out of his perch. This is really a local Nashville cartoon as Jackson is Nashville favorite son; his slave plantation, the “Hermitage” is an impressive local attraction. Some critics have complained that Jackson’s great legacy is the “trail of tears” where displaced native Americans were marched to reservations in Oklahoma as Jackson broke treaties with the “indians” and sent many to their deaths. The “trail of tears” ran very close to the Hermitage, and Jackson reportedly didn’t bother to walk outside to take a look. Critics thought a native American choice would have been better than Tubman, given Jackson’s history.

See me draw this one in real time, in the video below.

I color the cartoon in the live-stream video below.