“Been around the world and found that only stupid people are breeding” – “Flagpole Sitta” by Harvey Danger.
Tyler Boebert, who you may remember from the Boebert gun fetish Christmas card a couple years back, has knocked up his 16-year-old girlfriend, which is only a couple years older than the girls his father flashes his penis to in bowling alleys.
Lauren Boebert, who has three other sons waiting in the wings to knock up teen girls, should have spent less time posing her sons for ammo Christmas cards and more time teaching them how to put condoms on bananas. But Lauren is giddy about being a grandmother at 36 and is using her incoming grandchild to promote rural teen birth rates.
She’s excited that there is a high birth rate among teens in rural areas than in urban areas. Sexually transmitted diseases are also higher in rural areas than in urban.
Boebert made the announcement at CPAC, saying, “There’s something special about rural conservative communities. They value life. If you look at teen pregnancy rates throughout the nation, well, they’re the same, [in] rural and urban areas. However, abortion rates are higher in urban areas. Teen moms’ rates are higher in rural conservative areas because they understand the preciousness of a life that it’s about to be born.”
Yeah, sure. They also lack access to not just birth control but sex education. Boebert isn’t just anti-abortion but also opposes educating kids on sex. When you fail to provide sex ed, the chances increase of your son knocking up his 16-year-old girlfriend. Boebert said at another CPAC event that comprehensive sex ed shouldn’t be taught to “any student in a public school.” Naturally, Boebert is in favor of abstinence education but as her own kid proves, that doesn’t work.
Of course, there are smart people in rural areas, but people in cities tend to be better educated and informed than those in the country. Case in point: Sarah Huckabee Sanders is the governor of Arkansas.
Sanders is also rolling back child labor laws in her state, eliminating requirements for the state to verify the age of children younger than 16 before they can take a job. At what point will Republicans reinstate slave labor and indentured servitude? Meanwhile, Republicans in multiple states are taking time away from accusing Democrats of being pedophiles and groomers to lower age requirements for marriage.
The only good thing that can come from putting underage kids to work in meat-packing plants is that they’ll be too busy to be exposed to a Boebert penis.
Music Note: I listened to Paula Cole.
Signed prints: The signed prints are just $40.00 each. Every cartoon on this site is available. You can pay through PayPal. If you don’t like PayPal, you can snail mail it to Clay Jones, P.O. Box 3721, Fredericksburg, VA 22402. I can mail the prints directly to you or if you’re purchasing as a gift, directly to the person you’re gifting.
Notes on my book, Tales From The Trumpster Fire: There are 19 copies of my book in stock, which go for $45.00 each, signed. Also, I have copies of my first book from 1997, Knee-Deep in Mississippi available for $20.00.
Tip Jar: if you want to support the cartoonist, please send a donation through PayPal to clayjonz@gmail.com. You can also snail it to P.O. Box 3721, Fredericksburg, VA 22402.
Did you really think I was going to let the GOP response to President Biden’s State of the Union address slip past me? It may be a few days late, but here it is.
The Republican Party is so out of touch that it doesn’t realize it’s out of touch. As for myself, I know sometimes I’m out of touch. I attended the wedding of my niece Lyndsay last week and every time I opened my mouth, I could hear those new home buyers turning into their parents from those insurance commercials. Is the groom nervous? I couldn’t tell because he was running away too fast. HAHAHAHA no?
Republicans should have made huge gains in last year’s midterm elections but nominated wackjobs like Herschel Walker, Dr. Oz, and Kari Lake. Before the elections, they celebrated the Supreme Court’s reversal of Roe v Wade and pushed red states to ban abortions. Another major message from the party was hate as they used refugees as political pawns to “own the libs.” After gaining the House with a slight majority, Speaker Kevin McCarthy caved in to the goons like Marjorie Taylor Greene and Lauren Boebert and put them on some of the most important committees in Congress.
When placed in the same room with President Biden last week, Biden came off as the reasoned, rational, and mature one while the GOP came out like howler monkeys that ate a lot of paste while growing up under electrical wires.
Republicans gave us another huge example of how out of touch they are with their choice to give their response to President Biden’s State of the Union address. Claiming they were trying to appeal to American youth, they chose Sarah Huckabee Sanders. I know I make a lot of jokes here but that’s not one of them. They chose Sarah Huckabee Sanders to appeal to the youth vote. Seriously. You can Google this.
Huckasans went from being a spokesperson to governor which would be a huge step up if the state weren’t Arkansas. The biggest feature of Sarah Huckabee Sanders is that she’s a liar and a defender of the worst behavior.
When Trump caged immigrant children, she said it was “very biblical.”
When Trump retweeted Islamophobic videos chock full of lies, she said it didn’t matter if the videos were “real” and told reporters that if they were focusing “on the nature of the video, you’re focusing on the wrong thing.”
How out of touch is Huckasans? Weeks after the Uvalde shooting that killed 19 children, she said, “We will make sure that when a kid is in the womb, they’re as safe as they are in a classroom.” There were 51 school shootings in 2022 that resulted in injuries or death.
After Trump fired FBI Director James Comey, she told the press that “countless” FBI agents told her they were happy with the firing. She later testified under oath that she made that up. She lied. She later claimed her lie, some bullshit she totally invented, was a mere “slip of the tongue.” She even lied about what a “slip of the tongue” is. A “slip of the tongue” is a mistake in speech, like saying the wrong name during sex. Slips of the tongue usually reveal more truths than lies.
She committed illegal ethical code violations by using her government Twitter account to slam a restaurant that refused to serve her and to attack The New York Times for running an anonymous Op-Ed from an insider within the Trump administration (sic).
She posted a video from InfoWars of CNN’s Jim Acosta that was doctored to make him seem physically aggressive toward a White House intern and used it to defend the Trump administration taking away Acosta’s White House press credentials. They couldn’t admit the real reason they took away his press credentials was that he asked tough questions.
She claims she’s a Christian and “God wanted Trump to be president.” God did send several plagues on us so that could be true. Why couldn’t we get frogs?
She claimed that Trump’s unfinished border wall had stopped nearly 4,000 known or suspected terrorists at the U.S.-Mexico border in 2018 when it only stopped six people who were on the no-fly list. Lots of people get placed on the no-fly list. You can get placed on it for trying to transport potato salad with raisins. OK, that might be terrorism.
She claimed the Mueller Report was “a total and complete exoneration” of Donald Trump even though it states inside the report that it “does NOT exonerate” him.
She played the victim when that restaurant denied her service because they don’t want to serve lying right-wing goosestepping goons who are destroying the nation. She also played it in another incident, After a reporter used the term “lopping of heads” while saying there should be a staff shakeup on the White House communication team, she cried, “They’ve said I should be choked, they said I should deserve a lifetime of harassment, but certainly never had somebody say that I should be decapitated.”
She’s out of touch from her own party. While a candidate for governor, she said she would outlaw all abortions in the state and wouldn’t allow any exceptions for rape or incest. A majority of Republicans disagree with this.
One of her first acts as governor was to ban the word “Latinx” from all state documents claiming it constitutes “ethnically insensitive and pejorative language.”
During her response to the State of the Union Tuesday night, she said, “Most Americans simply want to live their lives in freedom and peace, but we are under attack in a left-wing culture war we didn’t start and never wanted to fight. Every day, we are told that we must partake in their rituals, salute their flags, and worship their false idols, all while big government colludes with Big Tech to strip away the most American thing there is—your freedom of speech. That’s not normal. It’s crazy, and it’s wrong. She later added that the “dividing line in America is no longer between right and left, it’s between normal or crazy.”
So the party that gives us Huckasans, Lauren dumbest-person-in-Congress Boebert, Jim Gym Jordan, pathological liar George Santos, Ms. Frazzledrip Gazpacho Police Jewish Space Lasers Marjorie Taylor Greene, and Matt Giggity Gaetz is the normal choice?
Even some Republicans thought Huckasans was a lousy choice. White nationalist Steve Bannon, while talking to asshat Lou Dobbs, blasted her saying she’s not “intellectually capable of going to the heart of the matter.”
Bannon and Lou Dobbs were mostly upset she didn’t mention Donald Trump once in her speech. But an editorial in the Arkansas Times criticized her for “snarling about wokeness and the radical left.” Austin Bailey wrote, “It got pretty dark and weird” and described it as a “word salad of talking points and name-calling, with some attempts at folksy relatability thrown in.” He wrote, “Sanders’ rebuttal to Biden’s State of the Union address was light on policy, heavy on menace.”
Conservative commentator Amanda Carpenter contrasted Biden’s speech, saying focused on “the economy and concrete issues,” with Sanders’ speech, describing it as a “deep plunge into dystopian culture wars.”
Carpenter wrote for Bulwark, “These annual canned rebuttals usually come off as tone-deaf. but with Sanders, there was an additional, unexpected contrast with Biden. She spoke for a dreary 15 minutes — all scripted according to teleprompter, with no audience. Biden spoke for more than an hour, with a teleprompter in front of plenty of hostile Republicans. Biden, 80 years young, rolled with it, tackling every tough subject on his agenda, inviting Republicans to join him at every turn. Sanders, 40 years old, droned on, her entire speech devoted to demonizing Biden.”
Former GOP strategist Steve Schmidt said Sanders was “abusing” viewers with “MAGA lies.” Schmidt said, “It was stale. It was old. It was an ugly speech from a lying governor who is unfit for any type of public service.” I disagree and believe Sanders would do an amazing job at picking up dog poo in public parks.
Sanders did this culture war thing for the Republican response to the State of the Union thinking it would work nationally because it worked in Arkansas. But what’s the Republican Party’s reasoning for choosing her? Granted, their choices of rational people in their party are limited, but couldn’t they have found at least one person in the GOP who’s not a raving barking lying lunatic? One. We only need one for one night. No? No.
With these kinds of decisions from the GOP, I half expect George Santos to give the rebuttal next year.
Music note: I listened to Audioslave.
Signed prints: The signed prints are just $40.00 each. Every cartoon on this site is available. You can pay through PayPal. If you don’t like PayPal, you can snail mail it to Clay Jones, P.O. Box 3721, Fredericksburg, VA 22402. I can mail the prints directly to you or if you’re purchasing as a gift, directly to the person you’re gifting.
Notes on my book, Tales From The Trumpster Fire: There are 19 copies of my book in stock, which go for $45.00 each, signed. Also, I have copies of my first book from 1997, Knee-Deep in Mississippi available for $20.00.
Tip Jar: if you want to support the cartoonist, please send a donation through PayPal to clayjonz@gmail.com. You can also snail it to P.O. Box 3721, Fredericksburg, VA 22402.
I submitted several sketches to CNN this week, then the editor came up with “cast changes for the next season of Trump World.” I thought I’d see what I could do with it. And, he liked it. I wasn’t even sure I could do anything with it as he’s thrown out concepts before I couldn’t do much with at all.
After it was done, they asked me on Friday night to make a few changes. Unfortunately, I wasn’t home. It was 9:00 PM when he sent the email which I didn’t notice. At 10:00 PM, he texted. I worked on a bit later that evening and in the morning we talked on the phone over the changes. Basically, they were afraid I went to town on making the women ugly. Even Amanda thought I could tone it down a little.
So, if you think they’re not very attractive in this version then you should have seen the other one.
Be Complicit
What kind of person would want to be part of something that disparages, slanders, and disrespects Dear Leader and his sycophantic followers? Hopefully, you.
Making a contribution supports my work and keeps the cartoons, columns, and videos coming. My income is from newspapers that subscribe to my work and small contributors. George Soros hasn’t sent me a million dollar check in weeks. Making a contribution of any amount, or buying a print for $40.00, makes you part of this specific resistance, and a member of Team Claytoonz (we’re still working on the name). You are complicit, an accomplice, and in cahoots (and whatever gangster terms we can think of) with this political satire pointing out that the stupid emperor has no clothes. Contributions can be made through PayPal, checks, and wads of cash exchanged in back alleys.
Whether you can help support, can’t, or just choose not to, please continue to enjoy and keep reading my work. Thank you!!!
I don’t understand why everyone is celebrating and optimistic about the resignation of Sarah Huckabee Sanders as White House spokesperson.
Do you remember who Sanders replaced? Sean Spicer started his very first press briefing without taking questions and lying about crowd sizes. In fact, his very first briefing was solely about the size of the crowd for Trump’s inauguration. Afterward, Spicer said, “Sometimes, we can disagree on facts.” Thus, the setting for the Trump era began. It began with lies, it’s been nothing but lies since, and it will end with lies.
With Spicer’s resignation came Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the daughter of former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee. Sanders picked up where Spicer left off, lying and having total disdain and disregard for the truth and the responsibility of her position.
Sanders lied about several members of the FBI being happy over the firing of James Comey. She referred to the media as “fake news” while encouraging everyone to look at a video created by James O’Keefe, a guy famous for manipulating right-wing videos to suit his agenda. Sanders has claimed that Trump has never encouraged violence. All this was before she replaced Spicer. Then the fun began.
She claimed Trump didn’t dictate a statement from Trump Jr. about meeting with the Russians. That was a lie. Later, she admitted to Special Counsel Robert Mueller that she lied.
She claimed that the background check for Rob Porter, who was dismissed for domestic abuse accusations, was ongoing. The FBI later confirmed the check was complete and had been submitted to the White House. Once again, Sanders lied.
About Trump paying off Stormy Daniels, Sanders said, “there was no knowledge of any payments from the president.” Of course, that was a lie. She later explained the lie by saying her earlier statement was based on the “best information” she had at the time. You know, bullshit the president gave her. If this is true, she lied based on Trump’s info, looked like a fool, and continued to serve and lie for him. This is a person without any personal ethics or dignity.
Regarding the policy of separating migrant children from their parents, Sanders said it’s “very biblical to enforce the law.” Oh yeah? How biblical is it to lie on a daily basis? I do believe there’s something in the Bible regarding that.
She used the spokesperson Twitter account to publish the phone numbers of The New York Times opinion desk and to call out a restaurant that refused to serve her, which former White House ethics officials said was illegal and an abuse of her position.
When a White House intern attempted to take a microphone away from CNN’s Jim Acosta, Sanders released a manipulated video created by an InfoWars conspiracy theorist making Acosta appear to have abused the intern. Acosta’s press credentials were suspended.
While arguing that a border wall was necessary, Sanders claimed that the CBP stopped nearly 4,000 known or suspected terrorists when they crossed the Mexico border in 2018. It was soon revealed the actual numbers was six. Not 6,000. Not 600. Not 60 or even 16. SIX. And, they weren’t at the border.
When pressed to say the media are not the “enemy of the people,” Sanders flatly refused.
It has been over 90 days since the last press briefing from the White House. I’m not sure why she’s resigning since she hasn’t been doing her job anyway. Sanders used her position to lie to the American people, the same people who paid her salary.
There’s speculation that Sanders is planning to run for her dad’s old job, the governorship of Arkansas. How likely is it that a bunch of red-state voters will elect a person with zero experience who lies constantly? Oh yeah.
Sanders said she hopes her legacy is one of “honesty and integrity.” She also claims Trump’s administration has been the most transparent in American history. Quite frankly, her legacy will be the same as Baghdad Bob. Much like Sean Spicer, Sarah Huckabee Sanders is the punchline to a bad joke.
I think she should ride off into the sunset with Baghdad Bob. They can make beautiful, lying little children together.
The rough.
I threw this one at CNN for this week’s opinion newsletter. When it was obvious they wanted to go another route but we decided not to make a decision until Friday morning, I told them that I was going to go ahead and give this one to my clients, thus taking it out of consideration for them. For some reason, I was out of my zone while drawing the final version and repositioned the characters several times. The drawing had a lot of starts and stops.
Be Complicit
What kind of person would want to be part of something that disparages, slanders, and disrespects Dear Leader and his sycophantic followers? Hopefully, you.
Making a contribution supports my work and keeps the cartoons, columns, and videos coming. My income is from newspapers that subscribe to my work and small contributors. George Soros hasn’t sent me a million dollar check in weeks. Making a contribution of any amount, or buying a print for $40.00, makes you part of this specific resistance, and a member of Team Claytoonz (we’re still working on the name). You are complicit, an accomplice, and in cahoots (and whatever gangster terms we can think of) with this political satire pointing out that the stupid emperor has no clothes. Contributions can be made through PayPal, checks, and wads of cash exchanged in back alleys.
Whether you can help support, can’t, or just choose not to, please continue to enjoy and keep reading my work. Thank you!!!
Those who work as spokespersons in politics refer to what they do as spinning. Technically, it’s propaganda but it can be done where you never lie. The real art of spinning is to not tell the truths that hurt your message. You tell the truths that help your agenda and leave out those that don’t. When those truths are pointed out to you, you find a way to deflect or use your truths to counter those. The best spin doctors never lie. With the exception of the Nixon administration, you will have a hard time finding evidence of a White House spokesperson knowingly telling a lie. Yes, that includes the George W. Bush administration.
That has changed with the Trump administration. With these spinners, it’s hard to find examples of them telling the truth. In fact, on Trumps very first day in office, he sent his spokesperson, Sean Spicer, out in an ill-fitting suit to purposely lie to the press. When a president and his staff lie to the press, they’re lying to the American people. Spicer, on Trump’s orders, lied about something petty, insignificant, ridiculous and easily proven to be a lie. He claimed and argued that Trump had the largest inauguration attendance in presidential history. Sean Spicer never recovered and to this day, when you think of him you probably have an image of Melissa McCarthy’s SNL impersonation.
Sean Spicer will never be taken seriously ever again and will forever be seen as a ridiculous human being. Working for Donald Trump has destroyed the credibility of several people in his administration…like all of them. Even his physician has become a laughingstock (“Trump could live to be 200”). When you lie for a ridiculous human being, you become a ridiculous human being.
Spicer’s replacement, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, is a ridiculous human being.
Among the gems in the Mueller Report are the lies Huckabee Sanders admitted to Mueller’s team that she had told as press secretary.
On May 10, 2017, when a reporter pushed back on Sanders’ claim that “The rank and file of the FBI had lost confidence in their director (James Comey),” and quoted an FBI special agent who said “the vast majority of the bureau is in favor of Director Comey,” she said “Look, we’ve heard from countless members of the FBI that say very different things.”
Shocking no one, that was a lie. She just made it up. She told Mueller’s team it was a “slip of the tongue.” I thought a slip of the tongue was when you say something that’s in your brain, but you didn’t want to say, like a secret racist dropping an N-bomb, which Trump will surely do at some point soon. But apparently, in Sanders’ case, your tongue slips and bullshit comes out. Usually, when you say something was a “slip of the tongue,” that defense doesn’t help you at all.
After the Mueller Report was released, Sanders went on Good Morning America and lied to cover for her lie. She claimed she made the statement in the heat of the moment, and that it was not “a scripted talking point.” Then, she started spinning. “I’m sorry that I wasn’t a robot like the Democrat Party that went out for two and a half years and repeated time and time again that there was definitely Russian collusion between the president and his campaign.” Her deflection was supposed to somehow put heat on Democrats for her lie. This is Trumpian logic. Democratic Party robots are much more dangerous than lying press secretaries.
If Sanders ever conducts another press briefing (they’ve phased them out), reporters need to grill her about her lie. Any other administration would have fired her for lying. This administration sends her out to lie.
White House correspondent for National Urban Radio, April Ryan said Sanders needs to resign. Ryan is the reporter whom Trump asked if she could set up a meeting between him and the Congressional Black Caucus, forgetting that’s not a reporter’s job and assuming that all black people know each other. Surprisingly, he didn’t have a “slip of the tongue that day.”
During a panel discussion on CNN about Sanders’ lie, Ryan said, “She outright lied and the people, the American people, can’t trust her. They can’t trust what’s said from the president’s mouthpiece, spokesperson, from the people’s house. Therefore, she should be let go. She should be fired. End of story.” With the Trump administration, it’s not the end of story, though it should be.
Ryan summed up with, “When there is a lack of credibility there, you have to start and start lopping the heads off. It’s ‘Fire Me Thursday’ or ‘Fire Me Good Friday.’ She needs to go.” But that’s the thing. To get rid of the liars in this White House, you would have to lop the head off and Trump is the big orange head.
Sarah Huckabee Sanders has as much credibility as Tokyo Rose, Hanoi Hannah, Seoul City Sue, and Baghdad Bob.
I doubt Huckasans will resign or be fired, but she won’t be press secretary forever. Since her career options will be limited in the United States (how many times can her dad run for president?), maybe she can find work outside the country.
The “Pink Lady” who delivers highly emotional propaganda disguised as news for North Korea’s state-run media (imagine the only channel being Fox News) is really old. She has to permanently retire at some point (she retires but keeps coming back). Perhaps Sanders can put on a pink Joseon and sing the praises for a different Dear Leader. And, she won’t have to worry about nosy reporters asking her tough questions after saying stupid like, “Trump is orange because of good genes.” And if they do, she can just feed them to dogs or have them shot with anti-aircraft guns.
Spokesgoons need love too.
Be Complicit
What kind of person would want to be part of something that disparages, slanders, and disrespects Dear Leader and his sycophantic followers? Hopefully, you.
Making a contribution supports my work and keeps the cartoons, columns, and videos coming. My income is from newspapers that subscribe to my work and small contributors. George Soros hasn’t sent me a million dollar check in weeks. Making a contribution of any amount, or buying a print for $40.00, makes you part of this specific resistance, and a member of Team Claytoonz (we’re still working on the name). You are complicit, an accomplice, and in cahoots (and whatever gangster terms we can think of) with this political satire pointing out that the stupid emperor has no clothes. Contributions can be made through PayPal, checks, and wads of cash exchanged in back alleys.
Whether you can help support, can’t, or just choose not to, please continue to enjoy and keep reading my work. Thank you!!!
After losing a legal battle to bar CNN’s Jim Acosta from the White House press briefings, the most dangerous administration to the First Amendment announced new “rules of conduct” for reporters covering their briefings.
Donald Trump hasn’t just attacked the media collectively, but also individually. He’s called them “fake news” and has accused questions of being stupid and even racist. Trump wants to dictate to the press how they cover him.
While Trump has attacked journalists April Ryan, Yamiche Alcindor, and Abby Phillip recently, most of his animosity is toward Acosta. While the administration and Trump supporters accuse Acosta of being out of control and irresponsible, it seems their criticism is empty. For example, to prove he’s terrible, they shared a doctored video of him created by the conspiracy website Infowars.
Their main issue with Acosta may be the way he questions the administration. Each of his questions starts with a preface. If you ask someone about something they said that’s not true, the preface usually includes the fact that your statement lacked facts. The Trump administration doesn’t like this. So, they have come up with new rules for the press.
The idiots in the White House who share from Infowars wants to tell the press how they should report.
The new rules include limits on follow-up questions, which are necessary when the first question remains unanswered. The reporters are to “yield the floor” after their question and physically give up the microphone to White House staff. Anyone who doesn’t obey the rules may have their press credentials revoked. According to Sabrina Siddiqui of The Guardian, “I don’t think that anyone has agreed to the rules because there’s no reason for the White House to dictate the terms about how reporters do their jobs.”
Reporters shouldn’t allow the White House or any politician to dictate how they do their jobs. This White House’s treatment is so bad that even Fox News sided with CNN and Jim Acosta in their fight to restore his credentials. Acosta is being accused of bad behavior by a president who shouts insults at women. This is also a president who has forgiven a foreign power for their murder of a journalist.
Trump’s war with the media starts by battling one reporter and banning him. That tactic will continue with others until the only outlets at White House press briefings are Breitbart, Daily Caller, Infowars, and Diamond and Silk. It works that way with freedom too. You take away one right before you move on to another. Trump is starting with freedom of the press. The only freedom of the press he believes in is their freedom to ask him softball questions, like Sean Hannity.
The press should not allow Trump to dictate how they do their jobs. They should continue to do it on their terms, and be willing to return to court each time Trump forces them to. They’re not defending one reporter or news outlet. They’re defending all of us. This isn’t about Jim Acosta.
New York Times chief White House correspondent Peter Baker said, “It leaves this idea that they are going to be the judge of who gets to cover them based on some probably arbitrary criteria that they will be the only ones to determine. The idea that suddenly you’re going to try to determine who is polite enough to ask the president questions is just kind of ridiculous.”
A free press is an American institution. What’s truly ridiculous is a president trying to destroy it.
Be Complicit
What kind of person would want to be part of something that disparages, slanders, and disrespects Dear Leader and his sycophantic followers? Hopefully, you.
Making a contribution supports my work and keeps the cartoons, columns, and videos coming. My income is from newspapers that subscribe to my work and small contributors. George Soros hasn’t sent me a million dollar check in weeks. Making a contribution of any amount, or buying a print for $40.00, makes you part of this specific resistance, and a member of Team Claytoonz (we’re still working on the name). You are complicit, an accomplice, and in cahoots (and whatever gangster terms we can think of) with this political satire pointing out that the stupid emperor has no clothes. Contributions can be made through PayPal, checks, and wads of cash exchanged in back alleys.
Whether you can help support, can’t, or just choose not to, please continue to enjoy and keep reading my work. Thank you!!!
The term “new normal” has been used a lot since Donald Trump entered the White House. As each day introduces us to a fresh new Hell, we focus on certain aspects while glossing over others that we would not have accepted two years ago.
Donald Trump admitted he paid off a porn star and a Playmate, and he’s claiming it wasn’t illegal. What a heavy confession, but while we’re focusing on the stupidity of his statement, we’re overlooking other aspects.
Aspects like, he cheated on his wife. We impeached a guy once for receiving oral sex.
He lied. He said he never slept with the women, yet he paid them off. He said he didn’t know anything about the payments, but a tape has emerged of him discussing one of them. Now, he’s giving us all the details as he sees it. We impeached a guy once for lying.
He paid for their silence about the affairs so it wouldn’t hurt his chances of winning the election. That alone wouldn’t be illegal, but making a donation to your campaign and hiding it is. Just a few years ago, it wouldn’t have mattered if it was legal. We wouldn’t have accepted it merely because it’s wrong.
He compared the porn star to his daughter right before he had sex with her. Are we at a point now where that’s normal and not at all icky?
Trump’s lawyer who paid off the mistresses has flipped on Trump. Trump now says “flipping” should be illegal. He’s not arguing against the crimes, and even praised freshly-minted felon Paul Manafort. He’s arguing against capturing bad guys. The president of the United States is acting like a mob boss. Is that part of the new normal?
A president without ethics, morals, or principles is the new normal. A president who puts Russia before NATO and the United States is the new normal. A president who lies daily is the new normal. A president who doesn’t understand or comprehend anything is the new normal.
Now, when the president is caught, ensnared, tangled, or complicit, it’s not even normal to present a rational defense, and sometimes, not any defense. No, the new normal is to deflect and engage in “whataboutism,” another term created after Trump entered the White House.
What is “whataboutism?” You’ve seen it. You’ve seen it on Facebook. You’ve seen it on Fox News. You’ve even seen it on CNN and MSNBC anytime they’ve had a Trump supporter on. An example is; Trump broke the law….but what about her emails? Obviously, you don’t have to be good at it. Lord knows it doesn’t even take intelligence. The new normal doesn’t include reason or being rational.
The new normal includes chanting “drain the swamp” at Trump rallies while Trump is engaged in criminal behavior and defending money launderers and tax evaders. Not to mention the first two Republican congressmen to endorse Trump were indicted this month. The new normal is chanting “lock her up” at that rally while five Trump associates are on their way to prison.
The new normal is crucifying a Democrat for saying America isn’t great, while overlooking the fact that was literally in Donald Trump’s campaign slogan.
The new normal is being proud that a tape of the president saying the N-word hasn’t been released yet, while overlooking the fact that the existence of such a tape is a very real possibility.
I catch myself overlooking details that would have enraged me two years ago. I remind myself to keep my eyes open when something new hits. I can’t allow that to happen. The new normal is dangerous.
It’s dangerous when the new normal includes oppression, government-sanctioned racism, and restrictions on the press. It’s dangerous when it includes putting one man above law and a cult of personality over the nation. The new normal is dangerous when an entire political party refuses to hold one man accountable out of political fear.
The new normal is most dangerous when it simply becomes the normal.
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Last week during a trip to Texas for a photo-op at a detention center holding migrant children the Trump administration separated from their parents, Melania Trump wore her now infamous “I REALLY DON’T CARE. DO U?” jacket.
Melania’s spokesperson issued a statement that the First Lady wasn’t sending a message despite the fact there was a literal message on the jacket. Then, the president undercut Melania’s team by saying it was a message to the “lying” media, and that Melania doesn’t care what they say.
Whether Melania was sending a message to the media, her husband, or on the issue, “I really don’t care” sums up the Trump administrations’ attitude toward human rights. In fact, the United States pulled out of the United Nations’ Human Rights Commission last week citing the abysmal human rights records of many of its members. Now, on the issue of human rights, the U.S. is becoming a pariah throughout the world…and in fine dining establishments in the Washington Beltway.
After lying to the nation that there was not a policy separating migrant families, Homeland Security Director Kirstjen Nielsen was booed out of a Washington Mexican restaurant. A few days earlier, the architect of the racist policy, White House adviser Stephen Miller was also heckled at a Mexican restaurant. Inflicting lifelong trauma on migrant children must make one acquire a hankering for tacos. If Hillary was elected, these ghouls wouldn’t need to hunt down Mexican restaurants as there’d be a taco truck on every corner.
White House spokesgoon Sarah Huckabee Sanders was asked to leave the Red Hen restaurant in Lexington, Virginia over the weekend. One of the owners said Sanders works in an “inhumane and unethical” administration. That point was proven on the ethics part after Sanders used her government Twitter account to smear the establishment. Sander wrote, “I always do my best to treat people, including those I disagree with, respectfully and will continue to do so,” which is a lie. It’s not with respect when she lies to the nation and insults members of the media for asking questions she refuses to answer, like saying some sentences are too big for Jim Acosta at CNN.
Sanders was upset about being kicked out because she works for Trump, which highlights why she was kicked out. She doesn’t work for Trump. She works for you and me. We pay her, Trump doesn’t. How does she do the job we’re paying her for? She lies and supports an administration that is tearing our nation apart.
Trump jumped in to smear the restaurant Monday morning with a tweet of his own. The guy can’t say anything slightly critical of dictators, but he’s one step away from writing Yelp reviews. Not only did the president’s spokesperson attack a private business because of a personal grudge, so did the president of the United States. Kids in cages and baby prisons aren’t nearly as upsetting as Sarah not being able to get a churro.
Trump’s supporters, white Christians who claim they’re the most persecuted people ever in the existence of the Earth, attacked the Red Hen by writing nasty reviews online, forgetting the celebrations they recently had over an Indiana bakery being able to refuse to make gay wedding cakes.
A restaurant can’t refuse service based on religion, sexual orientation, or the color of your skin. But they can kick you out if they think you’re a jerk. Years ago, a restaurant asked O.J. Simpson to leave because they didn’t want to serve a man many people believe is a murderer. Recently, a court in New York ruled that a bar can refuse service to a man wearing a MAGA hat. The court said political viewpoints are not protected from discrimination.
I saw a cartoon recently of a maître d’ telling a couple, “I’m afraid we can’t allow two fat ugly bastards like you to have a window table.” Maybe some restaurants don’t want to be known for serving bastards who work in a racist, stupid, lying, corrupt administration.
Trump has taken this opportunity with the Red Hen to turn it into a red herring. He tweeted, “The Red Hen Restaurant should focus more on cleaning its filthy canopies, doors and windows (badly needs a paint job) rather than refusing to serve a fine person like Sarah Huckabee Sanders. I always had a rule, if a restaurant is dirty on the outside, it is dirty on the inside!”
I have the same rule toward politicians. If a politician has a ridiculous comb-over, fake spray tan, and can’t find a suit that fits thus looking like a jackass, then he’s probably a jackass.
Watch me draw.
Thank you for your support. Reader contributions really do help and are appreciated in a time of dwindling revenue for political cartoonists. You will also be supporting free speech and the First Amendment, and independent journalism while those in power are doing all they can to suppress it. You can also support by purchasing a signed print for $40.00. Just look at the right of this page and click the PayPal button, or you can email and make other arrangements. Thank you!
Americans love to say America is the greatest country in the world. The new doctrine for our foreign policy is “We’re America, bitch.” But, I’m pretty sure the greatest country in the world wouldn’t separate children from their parents and imprison them in tents in the desert. Maybe there was some confusion, and they were supposed to be in tent prisons with dessert. Spelling is a challenge for this White House.
Obviously inspired by the recently pardoned Joe Arpaio (the racist law-breaking criminal sheriff in Arizona), the Trump administration is looking to place 1,000-5,000 immigrant children in tent cities in the desert. The number of migrant children the government has apprehended has increased by 20% since a “zero-tolerance” policy was initiated by Attorney General Jeff Sessions and Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen (who doesn’t know Norway is mostly white but knows a brown kid when she sees one). The new policy ordered the Border Patrol to refer anyone crossing the border illegally for criminal prosecution, no matter the situation. Some people being incarcerated haven’t crossed illegally, as they went to the Border Patrol and requested asylum, which we don’t grant anymore for people whose lives are threatened by gangs or spousal abuse.
The number of children currently held by the government is over 11,200 at some 100 facilities (with Trump murals and re-education classes) to hold them are around 95% full. One solution would be to stop separating children from their parents and throwing them all in jail, which sounds a little better than throwing toddlers to cacti and rattlesnakes. But, maybe the Trump murals will ward off the snakes and Gila Monsters.
Sessions justified this abuse of government policy by quoting the Bible. He cited Romans 13 when he said, “to obey the laws of the government because God has ordained the government for his purposes.” Funny thing. That’s the same verse used by Southerners to justify owning slaves in the 1800s. Scary thing: Sessions probably knows that.
Sarah Huckabee Sanders is a church goer as well. During a White House press briefing Thursday, Sanders was insulting members of the press (they really hate Jim Acosta) and using the Bible defense. She said, “I can say that it is very biblical to enforce the law. That is actually repeated a number of times throughout the Bible. It’s a moral policy to follow and enforce the law.”
I haven’t seen a government use religion to justify policy this much since the Taliban.
There are probably a lot of quotes from the Bible that can be used to defend this administration.
There’s, “Thou shall not grab strange vaginas, unless thou is famous.”
And then there’s, “Thou shall not boast about grabbing strange vaginas to a reality TV host on a bus unless it’s just locker room talk.”
Plus, “Do not shag a porn star unless she’s willing to sign a non-disclosure agreement.”
I think this one was added yesterday: “Thou shall not salute a North Korean General unless his large hat is really spiffy.”
I’m gonna let you in on a secret. I made those up. But, here’s one that’s genuine: From Deuteronomy 10:18-19, “God loves the foreigner residing among you, giving them food and clothing. And you are to love those who are foreigners, for you yourselves were foreigners in Egypt.”
But, maybe I’m doing it wrong, and we’re only supposed to quote Old Testament God and not Hippy God.
Watch me draw.
Thank you for your support. Reader contributions really do help and are appreciated in a time of dwindling revenue for political cartoonists. You will also be supporting free speech and the First Amendment, and independent journalism while those in power are doing all they can to suppress it. You can also support by purchasing a signed print for $40.00. Just look at the right of this page and click the PayPal button, or you can email and make other arrangements. Thank you!
To be a Trump sycophant one must shred their dignity, soul, respectability, credibility, decency, and perhaps all traces of what’s left of their humanity. Reason and logic are pretty much out of the question too. In return, you may acquire a nice orange jumpsuit.
When the first drips would come out about Trump’s attempts to obstruct justice, his defenders would argue that he was new at the job and didn’t know better. Some are still using that defense. I understand that every president has to learn on the job, but they usually have some basic knowledge of how it works, or at least what’s legal and illegal. Also, defending Trump with the argument that he doesn’t know what he’s doing, and he’s a dumbass takes away every reason for putting the guy in the office. Sure, he proved he was a bumbling racist idiot on the campaign trail, but the argument was he’s a genius and he’s the only one who could do the job.
That argument has also been used for others in the administration, like Jared Kushner when he lied about meeting with Russians and had to resubmit his application for a security clearance, and then again, and then again, and then again. He doesn’t have any experience and doesn’t know better to stop breaking the law, but he’s going to bring peace to the Middle East.
Now, some people are using this argument to defend Hope Hicks. The argument may actually apply in this case. It’s very believable from Ms. Hick’s background that she doesn’t have a clue or any good reason to be working in the White House, other than Trump finding her pretty.
Wednesday evening, I posted on social media, “I don’t really want to demean or stereotype any profession, but maybe…just maybe, you shouldn’t hire models as White House Communications Directors or conspire with them to obstruct justice. There’s gotta be more qualified people for that.” Nixon had very experienced people and it still didn’t work out for him. Of course, Nixon didn’t have a Republican sycophant Congress either.
Do you remember that meeting in Trump Tower between Don Jr., Jared, Paul Manafort and Russian spies? When it leaked out, Trump was in Germany and on his way home back to Washington. He and his staff put together a bullshit excuse on Air Force One for The New York Times who broke the story and sent fourteen questions to the White House. Instead of telling the truth that the meeting was about the Russians providing dirt on Hillary Clinton, the Trump stupids concocted a bogus story about Russian adoptions.
Special Counsel Robert Mueller has become very interested in this statement and the meetings around it. His team has told the White House that this is one of about a dozen topics they want to question Donald Trump about. If Scooby Doo had been a part of these meetings, he’d be saying “ruh-roh” right about now.
If you’re thinking, “gosh. It’s not a crime to lie to the media or the public,” you’re right. It’s not a crime, though it should be. It would be justice if someone went to jail for lying to me about stealing my Oreos. But it’s not. But, what is a crime is obstructing justice, which may have occurred during these meetings around the bogus statement. Also, let’s not forget that collusion thing which Trump was trying to hide.
Mark Corallo served as the spokesperson for Trump’s legal team. He was involved in a few of these meetings, and he abruptly quit last July. Mueller wants to talk to him. According to sources, Corallo plans to tell Mueller about a conference call between him, Trump, and Hope Hicks.
Corallo plans to tell investigators that the emails Don Jr. traded with his Russian contacts and other campaign members were a focus of this conference call. He’s going to tell them that Hicks said the emails “will never get out.” Corallo was concerned Hicks was contemplating obstructing justice, and he provided these details contemporaneously to three colleagues who later gave it to The Times.
If you’re a Trump supporter, you’re probably thinking “what’s ‘contemporaneously’ mean?” That means “existing, occurring, or originating during the same time.” If you Google it, a picture of James Comey shows up. It means Corallo told three of his colleagues these details while they were happening. It lends credibility.
Corallo told his colleagues that Hicks was being naive or was suggesting that the emails could be withheld from investigators. Another huge concern was that Hicks said this in the presence of Trump without a lawyer present. That means nobody can claim attorney-client privilege. Ruh-roh. If there’s an orange shitgibbon/former model privilege, it doesn’t have any protection in court. That privilege may be in Fire and Fury.
Hope Hicks will eventually testify to Mueller and probably to Congress. She has issued a conflicting story to Corallo’s. I hope she’s schooled enough to know what happens when you lie to the FBI. Lying to Congress is illegal too, but this Congress full of Republican sycophants assisting the president’s obstruction can’t be taken seriously. She better take Robert Mueller seriously. He’s not playing. Ask Paul Manafort, George Papadopoulos, or Michael Flynn. Ruh-roh.
I’m going to make a bold prediction: Hope Hicks is either going to jail or striking a plea bargain. Hell, she may be wearing a wire right now. Did I just make the White House paranoid? Sorry…not really. I think I’ll tweet that to Trump later today.
Jared, Ivanka, Hope Hicks, Kellyanne Conway, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, etc. There are too many people in this White House who don’t belong there. That includes Donald Trump
Creative notes: Yes, this cartoon is mean and unfair. Cartoonists always argue that we shouldn’t make fun of people’s physical appearances. I have rules about that too, but I’ll throw ’em out the window if it makes me laugh.
But, every time we draw a cartoon we’re making fun of someone’s appearance.
A few months after I started working at The Free Lance-Star in 1998, I drew a cartoon about the city council. One of the members was a heavy-set guy. My editor actually screamed at me and said: “at this newspaper, we don’t make fun of how people look.” My response was, “then why do you have a cartoonist?” That was not a smart response on my part because you should never make your editor think about whether they need you or not.
After Arnold Schwarzenegger was elected governor of California, I was having a discussion with other cartoonists and one argued that we shouldn’t make fun of his accent. I still think that’s way too P.C. and one of the dumbest arguments I’ve ever heard. It came from a smart guy I respect too. But, an accent is almost physical. It’s definitely part of the personality. It’s not an insult to make fun of it. If it’s there, then it’s there. Sometimes when we draw people we’re not just drawing their physical appearance, we’re also drawing their personality.
So, yeah. I made fun of Sanders’ looks. I’m also making fun of how ridiculous she is. If you don’t want to be made fun of, then don’t say dumb things. Maybe stop lying all the time too.
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
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