Year In Review

I made a comment on social media yesterday that I hate the year in review crap that consumes media during the last week of the year. I don’t need a summary of 2017. I was there. I lived it. I covered it. I drew up, down, and all over that mother.

Some friends and followers thought I was complaining I didn’t have a cartoon subject yesterday. I’m not complaining about a lack of subjects. I haven’t had a day over the past two years when I didn’t have a subject. Some people suggested I do something with a Christmas theme. My response to that was I don’t like drawing Christmas themes before Christmas so what makes you think I wanna do one after? Some cartoonists will though. Others suggested I do something with the exchange/return cliché, and I’ve already seen one of those this morning. Ugh. No, I’m complaining, as a consumer, about the coverage we’re in for this week.

I’m always glad when the holidays are over, so I can get back to business as usual. I had a very nice Christmas with some really cool people, but I still worked on Christmas as I had a cartoon and a commissioned art project that’s due today. Maybe I’m looking forward to everyone else getting back to business as usual.

But, if we want to do a year in review then let’s do it Claytoonz style, and that’s with great cynicism and sarcasm.

At the start of the Trump administration, I thought to myself, this is truly gonna suck, but it’s not like he’s going to be defending Nazis and endorsing pedophiles.

A few weeks ago I asked a Trump sycophant to explain why he was so loyal and slavishly devoted to Donald Trump. This is a person who posts pictures of Melania and Ivanka and praises their class and style and what an improvement they are over the Obama family. I didn’t want a debate with him. I truly wanted to understand his worship. As you can expect, he didn’t respond kindly. Perhaps I shouldn’t have included the word “sycophant” and the phrase “lapdog, boot-licking toadie” with my query.

He replied that he, unlike me, was giving Trump a chance. Granted, he’s right about me. I stopped giving Trump a “chance” during his announcement speech when he said he’d build a wall and Mexico, who was sending us rapists and murderers, would pay for it. But, let’s look at Trump’s 2017 and see where this sycophant probably should have stopped giving Trump a “chance.”

Trump started the year by attacking a Broadway play. He described the nation as “carnage” during his inauguration speech and a few hours later he sent Sean Spicer out to lie about crowd sizes.

Trump also continued to campaign throughout the year, despite there is still three years until the next presidential election. He spoke to the Boy Scouts Jamboree and talked about sex and attacked Obama. He even exposed what the Boy Scouts were made of by inspiring them to give a “lock her up” chant. Later, the Boy Scouts issued a statement about their embarrassment.

He spent the rest of the year attacking Hillary Clinton, claiming he won the popular vote, that his victory was the largest electoral victory in our nation’s history, and that Obama had wiretapped Trump Tower. All of these are lies.

He played golf at his resorts at least 38 times at a cost of over $42 million to taxpayers, after he promised on the campaign trail that he wouldn’t have time for golf. I don’t have a number of Diet Cokes, Big Macs, Quarter Pounders with cheese, fries, or buckets of KFC he consumed. Let’s go with way too many for a fat-ass 72-year-old. But then again, most 72-year-old men don’t spray paint their asses orange.

He’s made no progress on the wall or getting Mexico to pay for it. He failed to replace Obamacare, and while he is boasting about repealing the Individual Mandate, he hasn’t replaced it with anything like he said he would.

He has given a tax cut to the rich, which by the way, includes himself. He’s promised it will bring bonuses and raises to workers and that corporations will start bringing jobs and money back from overseas. I will refuse to believe this until I see the Trump Organization, and Ivanka, start doling out bonuses and raises and stop making their crappy products overseas. I do hear they will bring all of their money laundering to the States, so that’s something.

He’s bragged about the stock market, job numbers, and the economy, taking credit for the streak Obama started. Trump could have spent his entire year on the toilet poop-tweeting and none of those numbers would be any different. In fact, that’s pretty much how he spent the year.

Trump spent time attacking women during 2017. He continued his racist attack against Senator Elizabeth Warren, and attacked Congresswoman Fredericka Wilson and TV host Mika Brzezinski.

After a racist killed a counter-protester in Charlottesville, Virginia, Trump defended the Nazis and Klansmen the murderer was marching with. Trump was silent the first couple of days after the murder but once he found his footing, yep. Defended Nazis. He also endorsed a pedophile for the United States Senate.

He endorsed police brutality during a speech to police and spent a good chunk of his time attacking Colin Kaepernick and other black athletes for protesting silently before NFL games. He also attacked those who wish to remove Confederate statues in the South, thus playing to his racist base.

He also claimed he made it safe to say “Merry Christmas” again, surprising intelligent people everywhere that it was illegal during the Obama years.

Still playing to his racist base, he pardoned Sheriff Joe Arpaio, even before there were appeals and sentencing.

Trump spent much the year denying there was collusion between his campaign and Russia and even denying that Russia attacked our election, even though all of our intelligence agencies know it’s not a “hoax.” He also failed to criticize Vladimir Putin at any time during the year and allowed the Russian leader to own him at summits. Trump also praised the authoritarian leaders in China, Turkey, and the Philippines.

We have probably spent the last year at DEFCON Four over his war of itty-bitty words with North Korea’s Kim Jong Un. Which Kim gave the best of when he threw the insult “dotard” at Trump. Trump responded with his limited vocabulary by saying it was bad…really, really bad, and in case you didn’t notice, it was bad. Though he did come up with the imbecilic nickname “Little Rocket Man,” which he has repeated over and over. That truly helps with diplomacy.

I’m going to leave something out during this review but it won’t be his attacks on the press, the first line of freedom in a Democracy, and protected by our First Amendment. Trump has called any news he doesn’t like as “fake news.” He also called the press “enemies of the American people.” Meanwhile, journalism is experiencing a resurgence by covering a president who engages in cover-ups, lies, deflections, and attacks.

Trump is ending his year by attacking everyone who is investigating him, including his Justice Department and FBI.

World leaders have recognized Trump’s weakness, which is praise. Saudi Arabia treated him to a sword dance.

Trump took the U.S. out of the Paris Climate Agreement making us the only nation in the world not a part of the accord. Speaking of taking us out of things and making us exclusive, he took us out of the Mid-East Peace Talks by recognizing Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and promising to move our embassy there, making us the only nation in the world to do so. When the United Nations passed a meaningless resolution against this measure, Trump’s U.N. ambassador, Nikki Haley, said we are “taking names.” Wah.

The U.S. was hit with several hurricanes near the end of summer, with Puerto Rico devastated and still with much of the island without electricity. We know it’s an island because Trump told us so, surrounded by “bi water.” He responded by tweeting at the President of Puerto Rico, not realizing he is the President of Puerto Rico, attacking the female mayor of San Juan, and visiting the island and throwing rolls of generic paper towels at people.

After London was hit by a terrorist attack, Trump insulted the Muslim mayor of that city. Trump also tweeted racist videos from an anti-Muslim group and even drew a rebuke from the UK’s Prime Minister, Theresa May.

I would give you a summary of Vice President Mike Pence’s year but it was just a constant 365-day stream of “hail Trump.”

What did I leave out? Leave a comment and let me know. I’ll probably remember a bunch of stuff after I post this. And, the year isn’t over yet. We still have six more days. Hell, we may not even make it to 2018. That’d be AWESOME! Basically though, it was one, big, long dumpster fire. I probably could have just written that and spared you and myself all the previous paragraphs.

See you on the other side…or tomorrow. Maybe.

Now with this done, I have to get back to work on that commissioned illustration. I need sleep…and ice cream.

I want to thank everyone who has donated in the past. Your support helps me continue creating cartoons and columns with a little less stress in my life. Between competing syndicates with much larger resources, timid editors, and Trump supporters who attempt to intimidate the editors who do publish anything that criticizes their idol, it’s a challenge to make a career out of this. So your support (if you can) is appreciated. Want to help me continue to create cartoons and keep doing what I’m doing (pissing off conservatives)? Look to the right of this page and make a donation through PayPal. Every $40 donation will receive a signed print (please specify which print you want or I won’t mail one). All donations will receive my eternal gratitude.