Trump Cartoons



Usually, when a president, or any politician, argues for or defends a position, they use details of the subject. They will use facts while also omitting details that hurt their argument. Sometimes they’ll even lie. Every politician lies. What Donald Trump does with lies isn’t just different, it’s dangerous.

Trump does not argue details or cite evidence or facts. He vilifies. For example, James Comey is a proven liar, leaker and Trump has done us a “great service” by firing him. There’s no evidence Comey lied about anything. There’s no evidence he leaked, but the narrative used by Trump and his sycophants is that Comey is a bad actor. It gets worse.

Trump will engage in conspiracy theories that are so bizarre they should make your tinfoil-wearing, attic-dwelling uncle say, “That crap is cray-cray.” Trump’s political ambitions began with the lie that Obama was not born in the United States. There has never been one ounce of evidence to support this claim, yet Trump harnessed it and rode it to his presidential announcement.

After Trump won the presidency, he claimed Obama wiretapped his phones. Of course, that’s not true, and he made the charge without any evidence. Today, he’s claiming there’s a “deep state” that was designed to prevent him from winning the presidency, and it still exists today in our government trying to bring him down. Never mind the fact that he is the government now and the heads of “deep state” are his appointees.

Trump claims the FBI, under orders from President Obama, planted a spy into his campaign to cost him the election and has even co-opted the term “Spygate.” Trump is so stupid and unoriginal that he had to steal the name “Spygate” from other controversies. A professor in Britain reached out to three Trump team members, Carter Page, George Papadopoulos, and Sam Clovis to inquire about their connections to Russia, and he reported his findings to the FBI. If the FBI was trying to derail the Trump campaign, they did a horrible job of it by making announcements they were investigating Hillary Clinton. They never made an announcement about investigating Trump.

American intelligence received warnings from officials in Britain and Australia about Russians attempting to meddle in the Trump campaign. They received no warnings from the Trump campaign itself. Trump’s team was eager and ready to receive cooperation from Russian agents to win the election.

When Trump screams “Spygate,” he’s deflecting from the fact that he hired Russian spies, he allowed them into his campaign headquarters, and that he even shouted on television asking Vladimir Putin to help him win the presidency. Trump says “Spygate” could be the biggest political scandal in history and everybody in the media is using the term. No and no. This so-called “Spygate” is totally made up from Trump’s feeble imagination and nobody in the media was using the term before Trump, unless they were talking about the New England Patriots spying on the New York Jets.

This is where it goes from being stupid, bizarre, slightly amusing to dangerous. People are listening and believing him.

A recent poll finds that 59% of Americans don’t believe Special Counsel Robert Mueller has uncovered any crimes, despite the fact, the investigation has issues 17 criminal indictments, five guilty pleas and has sent one person to prison. This is from the Goebbels playbook. If you repeat a lie enough people will start believing it, especially those who want to believe. Trump could tweet that the FBI has installed alien lizard people coordinated by Elvis to spy on him and his sycophants will believe it. This has created pressure on those in Washington who are attempting to remain adults.

The Justice Department caved into Trump’s demands faster than a room full of NFL owners to look into “Spygate” and Republicans have been pressuring them to reveal the identity of informants. What they really want to know is what do the DOJ and FBI have on Trump. Yesterday, the DOJ held a meeting with the Gang of Eight, the leaders of Congress from both parties to show them what they had concerning “Spygate.” They actually held two meetings, the first with Republicans Speaker of the House Paul Ryan, House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes (who has used his position to deliver evidence to the White House), Trey Gowdy (because after holding numerous Benghazi hearings, he’s really good with the conspiracy crap), and Democrat Adam Schiff. They attempted to prevent any Democrats from attending these meetings. At the second meeting, Trump’s Chief of Staff John Kelly and White House lawyer Emmett Flood were allowed to attend. Kelly and Flood had no business attending that meeting other than gaining material for Trump’s defense. Their presence should not have been allowed.

Rudy Giuliani went on Fox News and boasted that the Republicans would provide information from the meetings to Trump’s legal team, which proved what this is really all about. This is not draining the swamp. It’s a BYOB swamp party. Bring Your Own Bullshit.

Trump is attempting to use the DOJ as his own personal protection service. Earlier in the day, he said people who want to kneel during the national anthem should leave the country. Trump has also said that our nation having “thousands of judges” to hear immigration cases is a disgrace, and we should dispense with the trials. Trump is using the strategies implemented by authoritarians on their way to becoming dictators, and that is using lies to dispense with democratic institutions. Checks and balances and separation of power will be rid of like the use of facts.

Facts are still important even though Trump and his followers have no use for them and argue for “alternative facts,” conspiracy theories, and confirmation bias. People who get most of their information from Trump’s Twitter feed and Russian troll farms will tell you that we can’t trust The New York Times and The Washington Post.

“Many people” have said Russiagate is like Watergate, but with stupid people. There is no Spygate. There is only Stupidgate. And it may be the biggest political scandal in American history.

Watch me draw.


Peddling In Crocs


Here’s this week’s cartoon for The Costa Rica Star.

I was reading a story how bicycling can be very dangerous in Costa Rica. It seems drivers don’t really care, or look out for cyclists. It’s not that different here. Though in Costa Rica there was a huge protest on this issue.

I heard a joke before, well I think it’s supposed to be a joke: People in cars hate pedestrians. Pedestrians hate people in cars. Pedestrians and drivers hate people on bicycles. The most annoying thing about cyclists is that they don’t realize they’re supposed to use the rules of the road, just as a car or motorcycle. That doesn’t mean you run red lights. It also doesn’t mean you ride on sidewalks and yell at people to get out of your way.


Trump Train











Is That An Alligator In Your Pocket?


I know. Go ahead and give it to me. This is very insensitive and has poor timing. I’m not good with sensitive or sacred cows…or in this case, reptiles. At least I didn’t go with my first heartless idea which consisted of an alligator eating Mickey Mouse. Pissing off the NRA, Trump, and Republicans I’m good with. Disney on the other hand….ugh.

If there was a huge money-making alligator industry and rednecks used them to overcompensate for their tiny penises, there would be a trade organization buying off congressmen to make sure anyone could buy an alligator at any time.

Right now the Democrats in the U.S. Senate are conducting a filibuster to force the Republicans to schedule a vote on gun control. This has totally stopped all Senate business….which means it’s pretty much like any day in the Senate.

Republicans HATE to talk about gun control. The only issue they hate talking about more is Donald Trump. If you really wanna flummox a GOP office holder, ask him about Trump’s revolving position on guns.

Creative note: I’ve had a theme with alligators the past few days. Last week I drew Donald Trump with alligator arms (played that off a Geico commercial). Today I drew a commissioned cartoon with crocodiles for a brand new client that’s based outside the United States (Claytoonz is going international. You’ll see it Friday). Now today I drew this. I can’t help it. I like reptiles.

I really like reptiles. I once worked in the reptile house of a small zoo in northeast Louisiana in the late 1980’s. My favorite story from that brief adventure comes from the day we cleaned the alligator pool. I didn’t do any actual cleaning but it was my job to keep the gators and Alligator Snapping Turtles away from the cleaners. I was armed only with a stick. There were five gators in the tank. They were all under six feet long except for this one mother. Before we could drain the pool we had to get one gator out which we did with a lasso. That took several hours. Some genius designed the pool where the drain was in the deep end and had to be manually unplugged. Nobody likes diving with alligators.

The alligators cooperated for the most part. The turtles, not so much. In fact, the turtles concerned me a lot more than the gators.

A large chunk of my childhood was spent in Louisiana. When I was a kid my older sister and I swam in a bayou with them. As a teenager my buddies and I swam in the same water. We never had an issue. When I was around ten or eleven we actually had two pet baby alligators, which was and still is illegal. I didn’t know that at the time and thankfully, the statute of limitations has long passed. We only had them for about a week. They weren’t as cuddly as we thought they might be. I got bit a lot. They never bit my sister once.

I do feel really bad for the parents who lost a child this week in Orlando to an alligator attack. That city had one tragic week. Losing a child under any circumstance is a horrible thing to live with. I know. It’s something I’ve been very close to. I’m sure Disney will never make this family wait in line for Pirates Of The Caribbean ever again.

A lot of people are asking questions about the parents, just like when that Cincinnati gorilla thing happened. Thing is, things happen. This is a freak occurrence that’s a true tragedy. I don’t think there are any safety measures that can prevent something like this happening once in a million years, especially after you build tourist resorts on a swamp.

Before posting this I searched for hashtags and one of them is “Disney Gator” which sounds a lot happier than it really is.



Trump’s Tantrum On Terror


Usually after a national tragedy, the country comes together. People with different philosophical and political beliefs can push them aside, at least for a few days, to unite and stand together. Then there’s Donald Trump.

Immediately after the attack in Orlando Trump tweeted how people were “congratulating” him on being right. Terrorist attack on our nation, 49 dead, over 50 injured, and Donald Trump uses it to point out how great he is.

The terrorist was born in the United States. That news was reported and confirmed Sunday. A day later Trump conducts a speech where he calls for a ban on Muslims immigrating to the United States because the Orlando attacker was “Afghan born.” What the Hell does that mean? Was he swaddled as a baby in an Afghan carpet? Maybe delivered by an Afghan Hound?

The shooter was born in the United States. Everyone and their brother, even those with stupid brothers, knew of this. Trump is so obnoxious that he can’t even let information sink in that challenges his narrative.

Speaking of narrative, he’s sticking with the GOP talking point that we have to call these attacks “radical Islam.” They can’t just say “radical.” They have to put the Islam into it. When an abortion clinic or church is attacked, they don’t refer to the killer as a “radical Christian.” Do you know why? Because Christianity doesn’t have anything to do with their warped viewpoint that makes them kill. Islam doesn’t either. Republicans, especially Donald Trump, prefer to scapegoat an entire religion.

Trump wants the president to decide who can and can’t enter the country. I think Hitler sought, and achieved, the same power.

Then Trump said Hillary Clinton wants to abolish the 2nd Amendment. They’ve been saying the same thing about Obama for years. How bad is your platform when you have to make stuff up? Pretty weak when you can’t stick to facts.

The worst part of Trump’s tantrum? He insinuated that Obama supports the terrorists. He was the birther campaign’s champion. He was proven wrong. He’s already proven wrong with his latest accusation. His campaign is making excuses for his comment ““He doesn’t get it or, or he gets it better than anybody understands. “It’s one or the other. And either one is unacceptable.” He later said Obama is either not tough and smart or has “something else in mind.”

The bad thing is, a lot of Obama haters have been saying the same crap for years. Obama is a Muslim. He hates America. He’s apologizing for America. He supports Muslims over Israel. There’s never any proof to any of that but yet they keep it up. Now their presumptive nominee is doing the same. They have the crazy, paranoid, conspiracy theory loving candidate. No wonder his favorite publication is the National Enquirer. It should be Breitbart.

Republicans won’t talk about Trump today. I can’t blame them. But instead of hiding in shame I would like to think I would have the principles to denounce a member of my party who accuses the president of supporting terrorism.

Hillary Clinton attacked Trump today. So did the president and he tore Trump apart, especially over his proposal to ban Muslims and his questioning the lack of using the term “radical Islam.”

We might have to introduce a new term into the political dialogue to be used for the rest of this campaign. “Traitorous Trump.” The man will put politics and himself above his nation.

The man, and anyone who supports him, is supporting treason.


Alligator Arms









I’d rather vote for an alligator.


Historic Firsts






