Cagle World

It looks like the on again, off again summit is North Korea’s Kim Jong Un is on again. Trump seems very motivated to have the meeting after cancelling the meeting a few days ago, leading me to draw a cartoon last week that probably didn’t get printed much.

This is an old standard, but it is fun to draw. We have a great section up on Cagle.com about Trump chasing the Nobel Peace Prize – my favorite is this one by Austrian cartoonist, Marian Kamensky:

This one is also a charmer, by Steve Sack of the Minneapolis Star-Tribune:

For any “carrot and stick” fans out there, don’t miss my Wall Street Coloring book!

What a great Fathers Day present this book is! Dad will be busy coloring evil Wall Street crooks all Summer!

Donald Trump called off the planned meeting with North Korea’s Kim Jong Un yesterday because of a typical, belligerent statement from North Korea. It was probably a good move to call off the summit; now North Korea is pushing for a new summit instead of the USA being the eager one, which is probably a strategic necessity. Unlike many in the media, I liked the letter that Trump wrote to L’il Kim, especially Trump’s line, “I felt a wonderful dialogue was building up between you and me.”

Since I’m cool with Trump’s response, I considered this to be one my my rare pro-Trump cartoons –but my drawing of Trump is unflattering so I doubt that the Trumpettes would see this cartoon as pro-Trump. We have a “Trump Friendly Cartoons” section on the front page of CagleCartoons.com and I didn’t put this one there –there’s just too much anti-Trump flavor, even in my pro-Trump cartoons.

It has taken me a long time to develop a Trump caricature that I’m happy with. Cartoonists are still all over the map on the way they draw Trump, but the long red tie has come to be a common device among almost all of the editorial cartoonists. I love the long, red tie.

Here are some of my “summit called off” cartoon favorites that came in today; this one is by Nate Beeler of the Columbus Dispatch:

This one is by Stephane Peray from Thailand:

This one is by Marian Kamensky from Austria:

This one is by Steve Sack of the Minneapolis Star-Tribune:

Donald Trump called off the planned meeting with North Korea’s Kim Jong Un yesterday because of a typical, belligerent statement from North Korea. It was probably a good move to call off the summit; now North Korea is pushing for a new summit instead of the USA being the eager one, which is probably a strategic necessity. Unlike many in the media, I liked the letter that Trump wrote to L’il Kim, especially Trump’s line, “I felt a wonderful dialogue was building up between you and me.”

Since I’m cool with Trump’s response, I considered this to be one my my rare pro-Trump cartoons –but my drawing of Trump is unflattering so I doubt that the Trumpettes would see this cartoon as pro-Trump. We have a “Trump Friendly Cartoons” section on the front page of CagleCartoons.com and I didn’t put this one there –there’s just too much anti-Trump flavor, even in my pro-Trump cartoons.

It has taken me a long time to develop a Trump caricature that I’m happy with. Cartoonists are still all over the map on the way they draw Trump, but the long red tie has come to be a common device among almost all of the editorial cartoonists. I love the long, red tie.

Here are some of my “summit called off” cartoon favorites that came in today; this one is by Nate Beeler of the Columbus Dispatch:

This one is by Stephane Peray from Thailand:

This one is by Marian Kamensky from Austria:

This one is by Steve Sack of the Minneapolis Star-Tribune:

The most recent school shooting in Santa Fe, Texas was interesting for the contrast with the Parkland, Florida shooting where student survivors rose up to lead protests, making eloquent arguments for gun control. In deep red Texas the response is standard, Republican “thoughts and prayers.” I’m sick of “thoughts and prayers” so this is my cartoon:

There are lots of cartoonists who feel the same way. Here are some of my “thoughts and prayers” favorites …

By Steve Sack:

By Ed Wexler:

By Nate Beeler:

By Kevin Siers:

The most recent school shooting in Santa Fe, Texas was interesting for the contrast with the Parkland, Florida shooting where student survivors rose up to lead protests, making eloquent arguments for gun control. In deep red Texas the response is standard, Republican “thoughts and prayers.” I’m sick of “thoughts and prayers” so this is my cartoon:

There are lots of cartoonists who feel the same way. Here are some of my “thoughts and prayers” favorites …

By Steve Sack:

By Ed Wexler:

By Nate Beeler:

By Kevin Siers:

The “peaceful” protests in Gaza have been quite dramatic, with both sides blaming each other for the violence. I thought it would be interesting to draw the peaceful protesters as doves of peace. Those are olive branches in their mouths.

My personal view is that there is no solution to the Israel/Palestinian issue. Someday soon we may look back on these ugly times as the good old days. If I could play God and impose my own peace plan, it would be to force everyone to give up their religion.

When I started this I thought I would draw all of the doves with no pants, Donald Duck style, with bird legs and feet. The problem is that birds have knees that go backwards and it was difficult to put them into the action poses without suffering some strange compromises, so I went with a different compromise: human knees, feet, pants and shoes, and birdie hands on the ends of their wings.

Cartoons about the Israeli/Palestinian conflict often invite angry email. I’ve drawn militant doves before –here’s one that got me lots of angry email …

The angry mail for this one came from Israel supporters who thought the cartoon was anti-semitic because they thought the helmet on the Israeli soldier looked like a German Nazi helmet; they also objected to the Star of David on the helmet, arguing that it signified Jews rather than the complete Israeli flag with stripes, signifying Israel.

Cartoons about the conflict don’t please anybody and are among the least reprinted cartoons –but cartoonists don’t get to choose the news.

The “peaceful” protests in Gaza have been quite dramatic, with both sides blaming each other for the violence. I thought it would be interesting to draw the peaceful protesters as doves of peace. Those are olive branches in their mouths.

My personal view is that there is no solution to the Israel/Palestinian issue. Someday soon we may look back on these ugly times as the good old days. If I could play God and impose my own peace plan, it would be to force everyone to give up their religion.

When I started this I thought I would draw all of the doves with no pants, Donald Duck style, with bird legs and feet. The problem is that birds have knees that go backwards and it was difficult to put them into the action poses without suffering some strange compromises, so I went with a different compromise: human knees, feet, pants and shoes, and birdie hands on the ends of their wings.

Cartoons about the Israeli/Palestinian conflict often invite angry email. I’ve drawn militant doves before –here’s one that got me lots of angry email …

The angry mail for this one came from Israel supporters who thought the cartoon was anti-semitic because they thought the helmet on the Israeli soldier looked like a German Nazi helmet; they also objected to the Star of David on the helmet, arguing that it signified Jews rather than the complete Israeli flag with stripes, signifying Israel.

Cartoons about the conflict don’t please anybody and are among the least reprinted cartoons –but cartoonists don’t get to choose the news.

I was going through my old files and I came across this oddity from 1989, about Reagan’s Iran-Contra scandal …

This is odd because I didn’t have a job as a political cartoonist until 1996, seven years later. I was a toy inventor and designer back in 1989 and I don’t remember drawing this; I remember the news, though.

Colonel Oliver North, the Fox News pundit and the new president of the NRA, was convicted for his role in secretly selling arms to Iran (which was under an arms embargo) to fund the “Contra” rebels  in Nicaragua. There was a lot of speculation about Reagan pardoning North and others involved at the very end of his term in January 1998, but in the end North got a light sentence with no jail time and Reagan was off the hook on the politically difficult “pocket pardon” decision. The next president, George H. W. Bush handed out a handful of pardons, including one to frequent cable news pundit Elliot Abrams – the faces in the news don’t change much.

According to Wikipedia:  In the end, fourteen administration officials were indicted, including then-Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger. Eleven convictions resulted, some of which were vacated on appeal. The rest of those indicted or convicted were all pardoned in the final days of the presidency of George H. W. Bush, who had been Vice President at the time of the affair.

President Reagan was off the political hook because people thought he didn’t know what was going on, in other words “no collusion,” at least not on the part of the president. Reagan, and then George H.W. Bush, refused to declassify documents, making prosecutions difficult. Presidents are in a powerful position to stymie investigations into their own government officials.

All of this is to say that the past looks a lot like the present. Nicaragua and Iran are still ugly messes. Our president, who may be as clueless as Reagan was, is making investigations difficult and threatening pardons.

I like drawing Reagan; maybe I came to this profession a few years too late.

My new cartoon is unusual for me because I would call it “pro-Trump.” I’m not bothered by this pulling the USA out of the Iran deal, as most of the world seems to be. The pallets of cash that were secretly delivered to Iran as part of the deal were enough to turn me against it, even if Iran wasn’t such an active bad actor on the world stage. My cartoon shows Iran’s Supreme Leader. I suppose readers won’t recognize the Supreme Leader, but what the heck, he looks pretty archetypal, so I didn’t give him a label.

I thought the rug should be a Persian carpet – it didn’t have to be, but it seems appropriate. I Googled Persian carpets and found that there are a number of artists who do paintings of Persian carpets. That sounds like fun; I enjoyed drawing the Persian carpet.

It looks like Justice finally connected with Bill Cosby. Here’s my cartoon:

We have a great collection of Bill Cosby conviction cartoons at: https://www.cagle.com/news/bill-cosby/