Cagle World

A majority of voters in both parties have said in polls that they are not happy about the prospects of a Biden-Trump rematch.

But not many editorial cartoonists will mind seeing Trump’s high-wire political act back in the center ring of our national political circus. Whether he’s in or out of office, Donald Trump is a precious Christmas gift to editorial cartoonists that keeps on giving 365 days a year.

America’s voters can argue the political plusses and minuses of Trump vs. Biden until Election Day 2024, and probably will. But now matter how much you love Joe Biden for saving America from four more years of Trump, there’s no denying that Biden cartoons are boring and Trump’s are not.

Whether they show Trump getting coal in his stocking or complaining about being at the top of Santa’s naughty list, Trump cartoons are extremely popular online, often going viral –especially at Christmas.

I do an editorial cartoon video podcast called Caglecast about political cartoons and the stats show that online viewers on YouTube are crazy about Trump themed cartoons. In fact, my Caglecasts that have featured a cover image of Trump are just about the only thing that my online viewers want to see, with up to 100 times the audience of Caglecasts focused on Biden, climate change, Ukraine, the Israel/Hamas war or just about anything else. The Trump stats are visible with my podcasts on youtube.com/@caglecast and they are astounding.

For my most recent Caglecast, four brilliant political cartoonists joined me to discuss our favorite Trump Christmas cartoons and express the holiday joy they felt drawing a political figure that they – like the vast majority of editorial cartoonists – dislike very much.

Rick McKee, a brilliant cartoonist who worked for decades at the Augusta Chronicle in Georgia, has done more Trump Christmas cartoons than any of the others. As a conservative who turned against Trump because of the damage he said he did to the Republican Party, Rick drew Trump sitting on Santa’s lap and responding to Santa’s question “Have you been a good boy this year?” with the word “Witchhunt!”

Rick also has drawn Trump trying to fire Santa Claus and holding a piece of mistletoe over his rear end as a Republican elephant is encouraged to kiss it.

One cartoon I liked was by political cartoonist Pat Byrnes, who is best known for his cartoons in the New Yorker. Pat threw a lot of puns into his cartoon of a man in a MAGA hat looking at the Jan. 6 date on a calendar. The father is telling his daughter that “This is the day the MAGA followed a reality TV star to the east with grifts of gold, frank nonsense and merch.”

Viewers write to me suggesting ideas for Trump-Christmas cartoons. One reader suggested that I draw Trump in the manger of a nativity scene with Mary, Joseph and the baby Jesus – and Trump says, “I prefer babies who weren’t crucified.”

I didn’t draw that one.

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Daryl Cagle is the publisher of Cagle.com and owner of CagleCartoons.com, a syndicate that distributes editorial cartoons and columns to over 500 subscribing newspapers. See Daryl’s blog at DarylCagle.com and watch his video podcast “Caglecast” about editorial cartoons at Caglecast.com

Here’s president Trump shaking hands with Saudi Crown Prince bin Salman, who has blood on his hands for allegedly ordering the murder and dismemberment of Washington Post reporter Jamal Khashoggi. Trump has been quite chummy with Saudi Arabia which seems to be a house of horrors, accounting for most of the 9/11 killers, and a long history of human rights abuses and recent ugly overkill in Yemen.

I like the idea of the black and white image with only the blood in red. Look familiar? I did much the same thing with Trump and Kim Jong Un.

As Trump continues to cozy up to murderous dictators, maybe I’ll make this into a series.

I realize this cartoon is a bit ambiguous. Perhaps Trump is wrestling with China. Maybe Trump is “facing off” with China. Maybe there is something sexy going on with China that we can’t quite see. It is hard to tell. I went with “dance.” The USA will soon be adding another $250,000,000,000+ of tariffs to Chinese imports, which will move China to retaliate in other ways.

I draw lots of Trump-critical cartoons, but this one isn’t one of them. I think Trump’s approach to China is long overdue. I even posted this one as a “Trump Friendly” cartoon on our CagleCartoons.com newspaper syndication site – although, that is probably ambiguous too.

I’ve drawn Trump and a Chinese dragon before.

Dragons don’t have to represent China, although the chinese style dragons are more fun to draw. Here’s the dragon cartoon I drew the day after the election, when Trump defeated Hillary.

The media feeding frenzy grows as more Trump confidants “flip”!

Maybe I’ll draw a follow up cartoon with blood in the water – no blood from Fox News, though; they may just deflate a little as scandals grow.

Remember the cartoon below? This shark cartoon was easy to draw because I had already gathered all of the logos!

No matter what garbage comes out each day, Trump just sweeps it under the patriotic rug so it becomes invisible to his supporters.

I drew a similar cartoon some years ago, when I was angry with Obama for sweeping our civil rights under the constitution-rug with his massive system of surveillance on everyday folks …

Sometimes it seems like only the rugs change.

Do you like the Trump flag-rug cartoon? Come visit my cool new store.cagle.com store site where we have framed prints and cool products, like this coffee mug …

… and this phone case …

We’ve gotten requests for framed prints for a long time. We have some nice ones in store.cagle.com now …

I selected by most popular cartoons for store.cagle.com. Come take a look!

Last week I drew this cartoon of Trump badmouthing burning California. Trump blames environmentalists and California’s mishandling of water resources for the firs.

Trump’s solution to our fire problem is to allow his logging industry pals to take out all the lumber they want from protected forests. There are lots of dead and beetle infested, diseased trees in the forests, but those aren’t the healthy trees the loggers want.  The larger problem is the flammable brush (or chaparral) that comes up to the edges of housing developments throughout California. My solution is goats. A zillion goats to eat the brush and leave the healthy roots to hold the ground against mud slides. Goats are a serious solution; they have been tried and have been successful in clearing large areas of brush, but there is no goat lobby and goats don’t make political contributions to the Trump swamp in DC.

Goats are cute, though.

Here’s my carton from yesterday, about Omarosa the dog. I wouldn’t want Omarosa biting my ass.

My blue, home state of California has taken the lead in pushing back against President Trump, from dozens of lawsuits to legislation about taxes, the environment and immigration among many other things. Trump doesn’t like push-back and California’s “sanctuary cities” really make Trump mad – that’s why I drew that face-off.

Editors don’t like blood. Cartoonists love blood. Evil despots around the world, like Syria Bashar Assad, are often drawn in a sea of blood. When editors see blood, they move onto the next cartoon. More blood, less ink. So I did two versions of today’s Trump vs Michael Cohen cartoon. I’ll keep an eye out for which version editors choose –but I don’t expect any surprise.

I love the bromance cartoons with Trump and Putin. Here’s my newest one.