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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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Trump Wins! Oops! Ouch!

Ouch! It turns out that I’m not too good at predicting election outcomes; I suppose I have some good company in that, still … OUCH! Here’s a nice, triumphant Trump I drew last year.

cwzy_zzxgaahy_e187261_600I suspect we’ll get lots of cartoons today with Trump hair on things like mushroom clouds and the earth. My Hillary/Dragon cartoon is a collectors item now! Today I’ll work on reversing Trump and Hillary and I’ll put out a new version of this cartoon at the right. This is looking like my “Dewey Defeats Truman” newspaper to wave around this morning.
We’re already getting a bunch of Trump Wins cartoons from cartoonists who were up all night. Here’s our first Trump mushroom cloud from my buddy Steve Sack, on the left!

The “Trump Wins” cartoon below is from our most conservative cartoonist, Sean Delonas, the longtime cartoonist for the New York Post.

Below Delonas is one from our brilliant, Portuguese cartoonist, Cristina Sampaio, who doesn’t get credit for staying up all night because of her time zone. Below that is one from Hajo de Reiger, our brilliant cartoonist from Holland. Somehow I think we’ll have a lot of Trump Statues of Liberty cartoons today!

     

 

 

 

 

 

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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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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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Trump in the Toilet

Trump looks like he is spinning down the tubes. I wasn’t sure that this cartoon would work, since it is rather odd, and there may not be room for his body under his head in the toilet … but maybe there is. I think the fun part of this is the swirl of hair at the top.

Last week when I was at the big editorial cartooning festival in St Just le Martel, France, I was in a “cartoon fight” against a Romanian cartoonist named “Clear,” who wore his vampire cape. They built a boxing ring and had big easels for us. The theme was Trump and I drew The Donald grabbing the Statue of Liberty’s “pussy” – an image I was sure would be the Yahtzee of the week. I think the nicest Liberty-“pussy” cartoon is this one at the right by Alen Lauzan from Chile.

I’ll post more on the convention in France soon! And when I get over the euro-cold I brought back with me I’ll start live-streaming cartoons again – stay tuned.

 

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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 …

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Swing-State Twister!

Here are Trump and Hillary playing swing-state Twister. I thought this would be a good one to send out the day before the first, big presidential debate.

Yes, i left out the yellow row on the Twister board – it was getting too complex.

This cartoon is a reworking of another Twister cartoon that I drew back in 2008 with Obama and Romney. It is interesting that the sing states were also the story in 2008, and the states haven’t changes much, except that now we add Pennsylvania and Georgia to the mix. When I drew the older cartoon I was thinking of both candidates being skinny – now both candidates are thick, and I had to rethink how I drew it – but I think the metaphor is still good. I have Hillary and Trump glaring at each other, where in 2008 Obama and Romnay seen oblivious to each other.

Oh! I didn’t forget the yellow row in 2008.

Watch me draw this one in real time in the video below …

Watch me color the cartoon in Adobe Photoshop on my Wacom Cintiq in the next video …