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INTRODUCTION
People come up to me all the time and say, "Boy, with Trump in office, you've got lots of material." To this, I always reply, "Yeah, but it's like being married to a nymphomaniac: fun at first, but it quickly becomes a nightmare." Many friends tell me they've stopped paying attention to the news to distance themselves from Trump's daily deluge of nonsense. As much as I might want to, I can't do that. It's my job to follow everything he says and does. It's actually harder coming up with cartoons now. When Bill Clinton, Barack Obama or even George W. Bush were in office and said or did something I disagreed with, my cartoons would exaggerate their statement or action, making it more absurd in order to mock it. With Trump, his absurdity level is already so off the charts, it's hard to top it in a cartoon.
Here's an example of a typical day dealing with Trump. I arrive at work a little before noon and he's usually already tweeted something irrational like, Cheetos mock me! Lock them up! So, I ask myself: Do I draw a bag of Cheetos working in a chain gang? Naw. I decide to wait a little while until he says or does something even crazier. I know that as Trump emits more verbal baloney throughout the day, his earlier tweet threatening incarceration of Cheetos will be forgotten. Then later, I'm in my office and receive a breaking news alert: At the White House luncheon, Trump literally poops in the punch bowl! It's still early, and I'm thrilled I've already gotten today's cartoon topic. I start to draw what will assuredly win me a Pulitzer Prize, sketching a large United States — shaped punch bowl, and floating in the middle, labeled "Trump," is a big orange ... and then there's another breaking news alert: Trump gives the Pope a glass of punch! Bummer, I think, now I have to switch focus to papal hydration.
The three networks plus MSNBC and CNN feature nonstop "Defecategate" coverage. On CNN, Jake Tapper's interviewing presidential historian Michael Beschloss asking, "So, Michael, did Abe Lincoln ever poop in a punch bowl?"
Unsurprisingly, Fox News isn't even mentioning it. Complete silence. Instead, Sean Hannity's railing about Bill and Hillary Clinton being in a love triangle with a Nazi dwarf.
The next day, as readers open their papers or check their devices, they see most of America's cartoonists have drawn a bald eagle with a tear in its eye as it watches the Pope consume punch, except for the few conservative cartoonists who've drawn bald eagles with tears in their eyes perched on bedposts, watching Bill and Hillary cavorting in the sheets with a torch-carrying, Sieg Heil — shouting dwarf.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "A Very Stable Genius"
by .
Copyright © 2018 Mike Luckovich.
Excerpted by permission of ECW PRESS.
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