Revenge of the TRUMPinator! The Best TRUMP Political Cartoons! #27

Transcript:

[00:00:00]Daryl CagleHi, I'm Daryl Cagle, and this is the CagleCast,

[00:00:03]Daryl Caglewhere we're all about political cartoons. And today we have three great cartoonists to talk about their favorite Trump cartoons. Our first cartoonist is Steve Sack, who has been the brilliant cartoonist for the Minneapolis Star Tribune for close to 40 years.

[00:00:19]Steve SackMore than 40 years.

[00:00:21]Daryl CagleMore than 40 years.

[00:00:22]Daryl CagleSteve has won the Pulitzer prize and just about every award an editorial cartoonist can win. And he has been the standout cartoonist in our Cagle Cartoons syndicate for many years until he recently retired, which I am still crying about. Thanks for being here, Steve. Happy to be here. And this is, one of Steve's, lovely cartoons with, Trump and the big lie kicking Liz Cheney out of the nest of little hungry birds.

[00:00:48]Daryl CagleI have to describe all these cartoons because this is also an audio podcast. So this is a wonderful cartoon, Steve.

[00:00:53]Steve SackI like to make critters.

[00:00:54]Daryl CagleYour critters are so cute and your cartoons are so biting and harsh. The cuteness just makes them go down like a, sugar coated pill. And here you have all of the butt kissing, elephants.

[00:01:06]Daryl CagleKissing the Big Lie Trump butt and they said there is no bottom. this is hilarious. This is one of those extra cute, extra nasty cartoons.

[00:01:16]Steve SackAnd it's a cartoon that you could run just about any day of the year.

[00:01:20]Daryl Cagleour next cartoonist is Pat Bagley. Pat has been the brilliant cartoonist for the Salt Lake Tribune in Utah since 1979. And he has won a ton of awards, including the Herblock Award. And he is also a shining star in our profession. Good to be here. This is a wonderful one with Trump climbing out of the sewer and tracking all the muck over the presidential seal. It's just a beautiful cartoon, a beautiful composition.

[00:01:45]Pat BagleySo I did that probably a month or two after he got into office.

[00:01:49]Daryl CagleThat is just a great cartoon. Here you have him stoking the fires of hatred and a giant furnace shoveling in the hate. I think that's great.

[00:01:59]Pat BagleyGiant MAGA furnace, yeah.

[00:02:01]Daryl CagleOkay. This is Steve Sack's version of KAL. Steve also does sculptures. And KAL, it's a great pleasure to have you with us today..

[00:02:10]KALLaughter.

[00:02:12]Steve SackWell, too much hair.

[00:02:14]Daryl CagleOh dear. this is one of yours, KAL. This is, Trump, Godzilla. is that Cassidy Hutchinson?

[00:02:20]KALIt is. It is.

[00:02:22]Daryl CagleKAL is the pen name for Kevin Kallaugher, who has also won tons of awards. KAL has drawn for many decades for the Baltimore Sun and The Economist magazine in London, where he has drawn and painted over 150 of their magazine covers. KAL's cartoons appear everywhere, and KAL is the first cartoonist outside of our syndication group that I've invited to appear on our podcast, because I'm a KAL fan.

[00:02:45]Daryl CagleSo thank you for coming.

[00:02:46]KALOh, it's so nice to

[00:02:47]Daryl CagleHere's another one of your cartoons that I thought was great. Jumping off the high dive and doing a belly flop into the poll pool. But Fox likes him and the other stations don't. He gets a 10 from Fox. That's funny.

[00:03:02]Steve SackThat's a beautiful drawing.

[00:03:04]KALThank you.

[00:03:04]Pat BagleySo you, you captured, you captured the Trump news host perfectly.

[00:03:09]KALThank you. Thank you.

[00:03:10]Daryl CagleSo we're going to go through a bunch of Steve Sack cartoons. And, I call these favorite Trump cartoons because they're my favorite Trump cartoons.

[00:03:18]Daryl CagleI picked your cartoons, Steve. And this is a big Trump nuclear mushroom cloud blowing up the status quo.

[00:03:25]Steve SackThat one was not my favorite. That was one of three cartoons I drew for election day. When we didn't know, it was so close we didn't know who was going to be the winner. So I had a really nice cartoon for Hillary winning.

[00:03:37]Steve SackAnd then I had this cartoon in case the worst happened. And I had another cartoon in case we didn't know. And our the paper ran the cartoon with the unknown, cartoon in it. And it wasn't until the next morning, in the middle of the morning, that they substituted it with this one. And of the three, this I thought was the, poorest quality.

[00:03:55]Steve SackProbably because I couldn't stand the idea of that guy

[00:03:57]Steve Sackwinning.

[00:03:59]Daryl CagleI liked it. this one made me laugh out loud. This is just hilarious. You've got the presidential seal. It says the seal of this president. And there's Lindsey Graham as a seal honking. Yes, boss. Yes, boss. Yes, boss. that's just hilarious.

[00:04:14]Steve SackWell, thank you. There's, there's a million cartoons about, you know, using the presidential seal and it's always a challenge to find a new way of doing it.

[00:04:20]Daryl CagleHere, you've got the, the Kremlin hacking department and it is, uh, onion dome topped, Donald Trump in the Kremlin. I think that's wonderful.

[00:04:29]KALThat's fantastic.

[00:04:30]Daryl CagleBeautiful. They had Trump in a lava lamp, shape shifting positions, free floating conspiracies, oozing racism, fact twisted into slippery blobs of incoherent goo, and oddly mesmerizing.

[00:04:42]Daryl CagleI think that's wonderful.

[00:04:43]Steve SackYeah, that was during the presidential campaign when he was first running. And I really couldn't believe that he was gaining support. You know, the guy has been vile from day one, and he just gets worse and worse. And yet, those folks back him, and they keep supporting him.

[00:04:57]Steve SackIt just drives me crazy.

[00:04:59]Pat BagleyI will never understand anybody who supports Trump. I just, I just absolutely don't get it.

[00:05:04]KALWell, I gotta say that I agree with those guys, but that's the best lava lamp I've seen

[00:05:09]Daryl CagleI can't recall any other lava lamp cartoon. Did you do a lava lamp cartoon, KAL?

[00:05:14]Pat BagleyI think I, I think I did, but my editor said this is not a lava lamp, so I had to redo it again. And I can't remember what it was about, but I have done a lava lamp.

[00:05:22]Daryl CagleWell, here's Trump, in America.

[00:05:24]Daryl CagleAmerica is his locker room for his locker room talk. And he's, towel snapping, Uncle Sam with his vulgarity. I, think this is great.

[00:05:32]Steve SackNow that one was drawn, when the, Access Hollywood tape came out and the big excuse he made was, , it was just locker room talk. that's what inspired this.

[00:05:40]Daryl CagleSo this is Mara Lego, and he is such a sad little victim. even when he's playing with all his Legos.

[00:05:47]Steve SackYeah, I always like to do things with toys and animals and things like that. I like to make images that are fun to look

[00:05:53]Steve Sackat.

[00:05:54]Daryl CagleWell, this is fun. I also like the movie parodies. I've noticed, in looking at the stats, movie parody cartoons almost always, uh outperform everything else.

[00:06:03]Daryl CagleThey, they float up to number one. readers and editor, well, I, we only track what editors like, uh, editors, just love the movie parody cartoons.

[00:06:11]Pat BagleyWell, we

[00:06:12]Pat Bagleyall, we all did a Barbie

[00:06:15]Pat BagleyOppenheimer. We all did something about Oppenheimer. Didn't we? I

[00:06:19]Pat Bagleythink I did. By the way, both are great movies.

[00:06:21]Daryl CagleOkay. Here's a Star Wars one. Also, Star Wars, they just, eat up every Star Wars metaphor. And there's a couple of guys out there that buy the originals of the Star Wars cartoons.

[00:06:32]Daryl CagleI get a call when Star Wars cartoons are out. Boy, I

[00:06:35]Pat BagleyI think we're all working on, iPads and... It's all digital, right?

[00:06:38]Daryl Cagleyeah.

[00:06:39]Pat BagleySo the, so the originals really are just ones and zeros. It is, uh...

[00:06:43]Steve SackYeah, I sell mine a nickel a pixel.

[00:06:47]Pat BagleyDo I miss the originals?

[00:06:49]Daryl CagleYeah, I mean, that's a lot to lose. Well, I

[00:06:52]Pat Bagleymean, the thing is, you can go back and you can correct things, and the reason we all do it is because it's better. It's just better. The first time I

[00:06:58]Steve Sacktried drawing digitally, I instantly switched, and I never did an original cartoon again.

[00:07:04]KALWhen you look at Steve Sacks work, you completely understand why digital painting is such a good way to go.

[00:07:12]KALHe uses new textures and special effects that make them come alive. And I just love looking at each one of them.

[00:07:21]Steve SackWell, gosh.

[00:07:22]Daryl CagleThis is wonderful.

[00:07:24]Daryl CagleHere's a Star Trek one, Operation Warp Reality.

[00:07:27]Daryl CagleOur lifelong mission to explore strange new loopholes to seek out new deductions and avoidance opportunities to baldly dodge taxes like no one has dodged before. This is the Trump form 1040. This is hilarious. Trump and his kids.

[00:07:43]Steve SackThat's when his taxes were leaked. he didn't pay taxes for, what, a decade?

[00:07:46]Daryl CagleI also noticed Star Trek cartoons are, like, the wildly popular ones, too. And these movie cartoons are just, crazy popular. Here's, Tangled and Trump combing his hair of lies that are, tying up Pompeo and Esper and the Republicans.

[00:08:01]Daryl CagleThis is great.

[00:08:02]Steve SackI don't remember doing that many movie and TV cartoons.

[00:08:05]Daryl CagleHere you got the QAnon shaman, he's in jail and the guard says, "Ever think about what it was that landed you here in the first place?" And it's Trump's image as he's crossing out all the days in jail. This is

[00:08:20]Daryl Caglefun.

[00:08:20]KALYeah. We're lucky that he has such a strong profile. Steve is great at showing Trump in all its different machinations.

[00:08:26]Daryl CagleTrump has so many cartoony elements. You could get away with just one of those little elements and it can define all of them. All you need is a tie or a little wisp of yellow hair and

[00:08:39]Steve Sackthose little puffer fish lips.

[00:08:41]Daryl CagleYes, you could draw him just with the puffer fish lips.

[00:08:43]Pat BagleyWho votes for this guy who, puts on bronzer every day and His hair is just bizarre. It's just absolutely bizarre. And he's just so ugly.

[00:08:52]Pat BagleyHis followers think that he's, Charlton Heston Moses character. I don't get it. I don't understand

[00:08:57]Daryl Cagleit. Here, Steve has the Trump stomping the sour grapes into wine and the drunk Republican drinking it. it's fascinating to me that Trump's personality is so focused on being a victim because I wouldn't think that most people think of, victims as somebody that they're particularly.

[00:09:16]Daryl Cagleeager to vote for. I mean, we have sympathy for victims, but you don't have sympathy for Trump, the victim, yet they want to vote for him. I think that's, crazy. There's kind of this attitude among the Fox viewers that they see themselves as victims and they just revel in that victimhood.

[00:09:35]Steve SackOh, they love that.

[00:09:36]Steve SackI'm being indicted for you. That whole thing. I'm a victim and you're a victim.

[00:09:40]Daryl CagleSo, what's up with that? I do see a lot of, victim angles in editorial cartoons and it just seems like victimhood is what defines the whole Trumpness.

[00:09:50]Pat BagleyOh, true. And here's the thing, is that he, this billionaire, who supposedly is richer than anybody on earth, is shilling for dollars from these people who are on social security and welfare, and they're giving them money.

[00:10:01]Pat BagleyAgain, I just don't understand the whole mentality.

[00:10:04]Daryl CagleGive them money like you would give money to a charity for victims.

[00:10:08]Pat Bagleyyeah,

[00:10:08]KALit's a classic ploy of populism but what's different now is, is that with social media and television and he being a kind of a television star, he can amplify it in a way that's never been seen before.

[00:10:20]Steve SackExactly.

[00:10:20]Daryl CagleAnother thing that editorial cartoonists like to do a lot is, statues of Lincoln. And, here you've got, the Lincoln statue being, hammered out into a Trump statue, the party formerly known as the Lincoln. This is great. I love these Lincoln statue cartoons.

[00:10:35]KALI hate Lincoln statue cartoons. I

[00:10:42]Pat Bagleythink this is why, why Steve did this cartoon is because Trump is always comparing himself to all these historical figures in his view. And in the view of a lot of his followers, he's the best president ever, or maybe the best president since George Washington.

[00:10:58]Pat BagleyOr maybe the best president since Abraham Lincoln. It just depends on how he's feeling that day. again, where do these people get their education? Where do they learn this stuff?

[00:11:07]Daryl CagleOkay, here you got Mount Rushmore. Three of them are wearing, sacks over their heads and one of them is wearing a Groucho mask to, obscure their, identity so that they're not associated with the Trump statue on the end. that's very funny.

[00:11:21]Pat BagleyThis, this is kind of a throwaway cartoon for Steve Sack, right?

[00:11:27]Steve SackI don't remember what triggered this. I think there were people talking about how he should be on Mount Rushmore. And there were actually, small statues that people could buy showing Mount Rushmore with him on it. I think this was just my reaction to that.

[00:11:40]Daryl CagleHere he is conducting the symphony of American carnage as everything crashes around him.

[00:11:45]Steve SackWell, that was my January 6 cartoon. When all of that was happening, and we had to comment on that, it was one of these tragedies that happen that we all have to do a cartoon on, and you've got to find a way of expressing it, of how you feel about it. And this is how I saw it.

[00:11:59]Daryl CagleThat's great.

[00:12:00]KALYou know, Daryl, you said that we should be arguing. And it's so hard to argue when you look at these cartoons. They're all beautiful. They're well executed. They're funny. Funnier than my cartoons. They're very funny. of course, I agree with them. Not everybody will. But

[00:12:12]Pat BagleyIt's not that we agree with them.

[00:12:13]Pat BagleyThey're true. This is factual. This is what's happening.

[00:12:17]Daryl CagleWell, you don't have to argue. You could just shower each other with compliments.

[00:12:21]KALOkay. I was going to say that they have to shower me with the same amount of compliments I shower upon them as a part of the deal, right?

[00:12:27]Daryl CagleI will edit everything so that you get equal compliments. Okay, so here we've got Trump as the Terminator, another movie cartoon. He says, I'll be back. That's hilarious.

[00:12:39]Steve SackThis cartoon was done right after Biden was certified.

[00:12:43]Steve SackAnd if you remember, a lot of Republicans were turning against Trump at first. you know, look at Lindsey Graham. He said, I'm done. I'm done with this guy. And a lot of Republican leaders were. Ready to move on and I did this cartoon because I didn't believe that Trump was gone and He sure enough came roaring back.

[00:13:00]Pat BagleyNo, no, no, He's got it. Is that exactly right? one of my bosses came to me after I was doing a anti trump cartoon after he had lost Because he's so done. He's just done. And this guy's a Republican, so He's just not going to be back. He's, he's over. And I'm thinking, do I tell this guy he's my boss?

[00:13:16]Pat BagleyDo I tell

[00:13:17]Pat Bagleyhim he's wrong?

[00:13:20]Pat BagleyYou just let it slide. Okay. I want to see more.

[00:13:23]Daryl CagleOkay, here's Donald J. Trump presidential papers and of course it's toilet paper, stuffing up the toilet and the pipes at the National Archives Museum. The lady says, that explains

[00:13:34]Daryl Caglehis weird obsession

[00:13:35]Daryl Caglewith flushing toilets 15 times. You know, when he was complaining about the low flow toilets and how you have to flush them 15 times, We got so many toilet cartoons.

[00:13:45]Daryl CagleIt was just a flood of toilet cartoons. And they were all good. I mean, cartoonists love toilet cartoons.

[00:13:53]Pat BagleyWell, we do. That's true.

[00:13:54]KALAnd how did the editors respond to them?

[00:13:57]Daryl CagleI Don't remember tracking toilet cartoons. Editors don't like bodily fluids, but you've got toilets without bodily fluids.

[00:14:04]Steve SackI'm not big on drawing bodily

[00:14:05]Steve Sackfluids.

[00:14:06]Daryl Cagleboy, we get so many bodily fluids and especially, blood, when there's war, allusions, the bloody hands, the blood

[00:14:13]Steve SackI do blood, I do blood, I do blood, but other oozings I, I prefer

[00:14:18]Steve Sackto avoid.

[00:14:18]Daryl CagleEditors don't, like to print blood. Blood in a cartoon kills the cartoon.

[00:14:23]Daryl CagleIt's like, having Hitler or a Ku Klux Klan hood. no matter how well deserved, that is in the cartoon, they just don't want it. But I don't notice them avoiding toilets unless there's bodily fluids.

[00:14:34]Daryl Cagle

[00:14:34]Daryl CagleThis is a wonderful cartoon. Trump University, he's at the, cheat and grab the junk machine and the machine is grabbing his wallet.

[00:14:43]KALOh my God.

[00:14:44]Daryl CagleThat's, that's wonderful.

[00:14:45]KALI love it. It is superb. The texture of the, you know, the hand, which is, you know, the device that's normally inside of these machines. It has all the grippy fingers that, you know, feel so familiar, yet it's picking the pocket. It is magnificent.

[00:15:04]Daryl CagleThat is magnificent,

[00:15:05]Daryl CagleSteve.

[00:15:05]Steve SackWell, thank you. I love those machines.

[00:15:09]Daryl CagleHave you ever...

[00:15:09]Steve SackI like to do toys.

[00:15:11]Daryl CagleHave you ever won anything in one of those machines? Are you kidding? I don't think anybody has. Okay, we're switching to Pat!

[00:15:16]Pat BagleyHere's the end of, an era.

[00:15:18]Daryl CagleShow us your dinosaur shirt.

[00:15:20]Daryl CagleOh, okay. Dinosaurs are wonderful for editorial cartoonists.

[00:15:28]Pat BagleyTrue. Do you see the eyeglasses? On the dinosaur?

[00:15:32]Daryl CagleYeah.

[00:15:34]Pat BagleyOkay, so this was done by Riley Black, who is a paleontologist out here living in Utah. And Utah is heaven for paleontologists because there are bones everywhere. And so, I live dinosaurs too.

[00:15:44]Pat BagleyAnd here are the Republicans in their natural habitat where they're picking money and they're giving each other money. Money is the root of all Republicans. And here they are, and Trump is screaming down as this giant asteroid that's going to destroy the whole ecosystem, I hope.

[00:15:58]Steve SackThat cartoon was overly hopeful.

[00:16:02]Pat BagleyI agree.

[00:16:04]Daryl CagleSo here you have Trump with his Sharpie marker, and his Sharpie marker is so funny and, you can almost draw Trump just by drawing a Sharpie marker, and, he's here, crossing out we the people of the Constitution with "ME". That's wonderful.

[00:16:18]Pat BagleyWell, he was just caught this last week in one of his many court cases, arguing that he didn't have to. defend and protect the Constitution. He didn't have to uphold it. His lawyers were making some weird legal argument that he wasn't legally obligated to defend the Constitution. I'm saying this and you're thinking, Oh no, he's just repeating stuff he hears on the Internet.

[00:16:38]Pat BagleyLook it up. Look it up. His lawyers were arguing before One of these court cases is that he doesn't have to defend the Constitution.

[00:16:45]Daryl CagleHe's sworn to defend the Constitution.

[00:16:48]Pat BagleyOh! He's sworn to do a lot of stuff, but does he do it? He promises he won't. Did he ever tell the truth? No! He's so slippery.

[00:16:56]Daryl CagleBut you know, that's one of the things that conservatives say all the time. Look it up. Check it for yourself.

[00:17:02]Pat BagleyOh, yeah, research. Okay, this is...

[00:17:05]Daryl CagleSometimes you sound conservative, Pat. So here you've got Fairy Trump flying over his, boxes of top secret documents saying you're declassified, and you're declassified, and you're declassified, and you're declassified. The declassification fairy, that's very funny.

[00:17:20]Pat Bagleythe thing is, the rules don't apply to him.

[00:17:24]Daryl CagleWell, his declassifications are just as real as fairies are.

[00:17:28]Pat BagleyExactly. Okay.

[00:17:29]Steve SackWell, he said he can declassify documents just in his mind.

[00:17:33]Pat BagleyOkay. Which is, he's an absolute lunatic. Which is fine, we have lots of lunatics. But he's got, the Republican Party in his pocket. Who believe pretty much everything he says. You've got two thirds of Republicans thinking that the election was stolen in 2020. And it's a lie. You've got an entire political party believing a lie.

[00:17:53]Pat BagleyAn absolute, provable lie. This is dangerous times. This is bad. what do you do as a cartoonist to expose just how bad it is?

[00:18:01]Pat BagleyWe do our best. We try.

[00:18:03]KALWell, it is important, of course, that all of these cartoons are just little tiny specks of sand in a whole sandstorm. You know, that you have to keep on doing it. Do your little bit. Keep on going. Don't get discouraged because our voices are important and they help in the whole conversation.

[00:18:18]Pat BagleyOkay, and it's also good to be on the record. When people look back on this, they go, Oh, how come people didn't realize this? They go, Well, people did. Some people understood what was going on at the time. So we're establishing a record of what happens. That's part of what we do.

[00:18:31]Daryl CagleThis is wonderful. It's the MAGA dog, drinking out of the Fox News toilet. this is like, an icon for our times.

[00:18:39]Pat BagleyThis is one of those that's not going to be misunderstood.

[00:18:41]Pat BagleyI think it's pretty clear cut from what you're

[00:18:46]Steve SackThat's a perfect

[00:18:46]Pat Bagleycartoon. You can draw a bright line between the establishment of Fox News in 1996 and the erosion of trust in the institutions that make us a nation. they started saying, We're the truth, don't believe anybody else. And they started going after everybody.

[00:19:01]Pat BagleyAnd it's since 1996, started happening a little bit before Rush Limbaugh, but since 1996 and the introduction of Fox News and right wing media. the country's just gone downhill. It's not because of Republicans or Democrats. It's because of right wing media. Because they just lie.

[00:19:15]Pat BagleyThey just lie all the time.

[00:19:17]Daryl CagleI do notice that, editors are reluctant to print cartoons about Fox News. Of course, Most of the cartoonists, are liberal and they love to draw cartoons about Fox News and there's a whole lot of them that just don't get printed and that's very frustrating, I think.

[00:19:31]Daryl CagleBut in general, newspapers, journalists are fascinated by, any kind of reporting about journalism and they, they play that up but they don't print stuff that's critical of other news outlets. And, I find that disappointing.

[00:19:45]Steve SackWell, Daryl, are they also reluctant to print cartoons about mainstream media, MSM?

[00:19:50]Steve SackI see a lot of those by the conservative cartoonists.

[00:19:54]Daryl CagleYou do. And, you know, back in the day, Everybody used to think that since there are so many conservative leaning papers, because most papers are small and rural or suburban and tend to have more conservative audiences, fewer papers are big and have, a, urban liberal audience.

[00:20:11]Daryl Caglewe used to think that the fewer conservative cartoonists got reprinted more than the liberal cartoonists. And, in recent years, that is no longer true. what happens is all of the editors reprint the same cartoons, which are cartoons that express no opinion at all, and that are just funny little gags.

[00:20:29]Daryl Cagleso the conservative and the liberal papers Print the same cartoons. so, it's just very frustrating for us cartoonists in this environment as, as newspapers grow more timid over time as their elderly audience shrinks and their circulation declines.

[00:20:45]Pat BagleyNo, I wondered about that too, because we're controversial, but we're supposed to be controversial.

[00:20:50]Pat BagleyAnd we've always been controversial. So, why in the last 10 years, 15 years, Has, being controversial, been a bad thing. it's just happened fairly recently.

[00:20:59]Daryl CagleThere's a disconnect between supply and demand with, editorial cartoons. What we want to supply is not what they demand. It's frustrating.

[00:21:08]Pat BagleyIt goes along with my theory that right wing media has

[00:21:10]Pat Bagleyscrewed up everything. That's what they do.

[00:21:13]Daryl CaglePat, this is a great cartoon. Sign of the Times. You got the immigration, people, running sign and the, Trump 2020, MAGA people, chasing them with Signs of the Times.

[00:21:24]Pat BagleySo I grew up in, um, around San Diego, which is right next to Mexico. Back, geez, when I was a kid, back then about

[00:21:34]Pat Bagleyillegal immigration. But the thing is, the growers, the farmers, the builders, the construction people needed labor from Mexico. And so, these people are coming up to work, they're coming up to, get a better life. And that was it. but even back then, we had people who thought that they were, the problem with America and they're not.

[00:21:56]Pat BagleyImmigration is not a problem. Immigration is actually one of our strengths and I'm trying to express that in this cartoon.

[00:22:02]Daryl Caglewe do see a whole lot more, anti immigration cartoons from the few conservative cartoonists, not a whole lot of immigration cartoons from, the majority liberal cartoonists, and, I don't know, perhaps that's as it should be, is there some amount of immigrants crossing the border that is too much that makes it more of an issue for you, Pat?

[00:22:23]Pat BagleyI don't know. Other countries have taken in, as a percent of population, a lot more refugees and immigrants because people are in distress. They need help. I mean, Mexican immigrants, people from Central and South America. These people are being threatened by gangs, their life is just miserable because the governments don't work.

[00:22:39]Pat BagleyIs there any limit to the amount of immigration? We're a big country. We can handle a lot. If we just changed our point of view, we could do this. And these people would be citizens, they'd be voting Republican in the next 20 years if... Everything worked as it should,

[00:22:55]Daryl CagleSo you think there may be a limit, it's too much, but we're so far from it, it's not, it shouldn't be a consideration now?

[00:23:02]Pat BagleyNo, we, we've always thought it's been too much. Always, always. Back in the 1900s, back in the 1800s, they were passing these anti immigration laws, And this is not new, but America is the greatest country in the world. Mostly because of immigrants. I'm an immigrant. I'm a, like, 10th generation immigrant.

[00:23:20]Pat BagleyBut I was not born here, I did not come from here. My people came from a different place. But they came over here. And we established ourselves. And we pushed out the people that were here originally. And this is a story that should be told. It should be understood. America is not a Christian nation.

[00:23:35]Pat BagleyAmerica is a place that's been around for a billion years. And we should respect other people's ideas.

[00:23:41]Steve SackWell, they, they could solve that immigration issue, but it's too juicy, a political topic, it's too, it's too effective to use.

[00:23:50]Steve Sackpolitically. And honestly, if Trump is reelected, reelected, that issue will probably be one of the main reasons.

[00:23:58]Pat BagleyThat's true. And the thing is, Republicans could have solved this immigration issue 20 years ago? There was a bipartisan bill coming out of the Senate, that would have established new immigration laws.

[00:24:09]Pat BagleyAnd Republicans didn't want to do it. And so the House sunk it, even though it had bipartisan participation in the Senate. The Republican House sunk it, because they don't want a solution. They don't want to solve this problem. They want to constantly bring it

[00:24:21]Daryl Cagleup. Well, opposition to immigration is driving all kinds of election results in Europe.

[00:24:25]Daryl CagleIt's the reason for Brexit. It's really got legs.

[00:24:29]Pat BagleyNo, I agree. I agree.

[00:24:30]Pat BagleySo sometimes you gotta flush like

[00:24:35]Daryl CagleOkay, sometimes you gotta flush like 10 or 15 times as, as Trump tries to, flush golden America down his golden toilet. That's hilarious. The golden toilet is hilarious. Here you've got, Trump Miley Cyrus swinging in on a wrecking ball of new EPA rules about to crash into the, the Christmas ornament, Earth wrecking ball.

[00:25:01]Daryl CagleThat's, that's just hilarious. That's, that's so many metaphors all in one. And yet... And yet it is a Christmas cartoon, and editors love the Christmas cartoons. I mean, the way to get your cartoon printed is to do a Christmas cartoon. And so this is like, a master course in editorial cartooning, Pat.

[00:25:21]Pat BagleyThank you. you all understand here that, uh, uh, global warming is an issue, right? The world is burning down. I mean, if you're looking at what's going on in South America, And Australia, and it's just the beginning of spring down there. And already they've got these massive firestorms going on. and yet, Republicans up here are saying, I mean Utah, legislature, they all say that global warming is a hoax.

[00:25:42]Pat BagleyUh, no. But thank you for the compliment of the cartoon.

[00:25:45]KALI love this cartoon. It's very simple. Very clear, but also incredibly creative. I, I look at this and I say, why didn't I think of this cartoon? And the answer is, I never would have. It's amazing.

[00:25:57]Pat BagleyOh, thank you.

[00:25:58]Daryl CagleAnd, uh, here's another movie reference cartoon with the Christmas story and the elephant with his tongue stuck to the flagpole Trump 2020 and that is just really apt. They are, seriously suffering from this. And this is very funny. And again, a Christmas cartoon, which means everybody prints it.

[00:26:18]Pat Bagleyokay, good to know.

[00:26:19]Steve SackThe quibble I have is that I think the elephant would be happy. Ha ha ha

[00:26:23]KALha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha

[00:26:24]Daryl Cagleha ha ha ha ha Happy because he's always stuck to Trump.

[00:26:27]Steve SackYep,

[00:26:27]Daryl Cagleall right. Here's a giant corruption Trump, uh, statue of the Black Lives Matter dad and his little daughter is also known as only my life matters monument.

[00:26:37]Daryl CagleThe corruption monument.

[00:26:39]Pat BagleyAnd here in front of your face, in front of everybody, You've got a corrupt president with his corrupt children making corrupt deals with all the nations in the world, and they're getting billions of dollars.

[00:26:53]Pat BagleyI mean, we can talk about Jared Kushner, but this is, these people are crooks. They're just absolute crooks. And so the Republican playbook is, they call us crooks, we'll call them crooks. And as far as their base goes, it works.

[00:27:06]Daryl CagleHave you ever drawn a Hunter Biden cartoon?

[00:27:08]Pat BagleyI did. We'll have to look it up. I can't remember.

[00:27:10]Pat BagleyKind of like what I just said, that they're so focused on this one non issue. And Hunter Biden was not a government employee, was not a government official. And the Republicans can't tie anything that he did to his father, as far as his father making any money off it.

[00:27:23]Daryl CagleThere are remarkably few Biden cartoons, by our conservative cartoonists.

[00:27:29]Daryl Cagleit's really hard to care about it. You know, I feel a little bit sorry for the guy because he's a drug addict and a jerk. But, you know, that doesn't motivate me to draw a cartoon about him. he's just, uh, doesn't make much of an impact in cartoons. Oh,

[00:27:45]Pat Bagleyagain, good, good to know. Um, it's a non issue.

[00:27:47]Pat BagleyRepublicans are really good at blowing up non issues. Benghazi, uh, I don't know, half a dozen inquiries, they spent 50 million dollars investigating Benghazi and they got nothing? That's what they do. it's the appearance of corruption that they're looking for, incompetence that they're looking for.

[00:28:02]Daryl CagleSo, Trump could shoot somebody on 5th Avenue and, his, followers would still vote for him. here he's got the guns. He shot somebody on 5th Avenue who wrote, Trump did it in his blood on the sidewalk. His, uh, no editor will print this blood. And, uh, And, uh, the Trump y, uh, guy is saying to the policeman, Why aren't you investigating Joe Biden?

[00:28:24]Daryl Cagleas everyone points at the culprit, Trump. that's a wonderful cartoon. I wish it got printed.

[00:28:30]Pat BagleyBut people didn't pick it up. It was not popular.

[00:28:32]Daryl CagleWell, I think it's just the blood. Oh, okay. What you gonna do?

[00:28:37]Pat BagleyYeah, what you gonna do?. People really like it on social media.

[00:28:40]Daryl CagleThis is an extra bloody one. It's all the bad guys in the world with Trump singing we are the world as, all of the press is, bloody again and, murdered on the ground with lots of blood.

[00:28:52]KALYou know,

[00:28:54]Pat Bagleyeditors don't publish because there's blood.

[00:28:56]KALAnd isn't that, the really true difference between print and, social media and the internet is that yes, you know, in the world of, you know, a much more old fashioned notion. But the place where we're going is one where blood and everything else can be out there in the middle of the discussion.

[00:29:12]Daryl CagleIt certainly is, different stuff that gets, popular on the web than gets, printed in newspapers.

[00:29:20]KALI

[00:29:20]Steve Sackthink that's a more accurate gauge of how good the cartoon is. You know, if your gauge is how many spineless editors are going to print a cartoon versus... Online, how many people spontaneously like and share a piece.

[00:29:34]Steve SackI'll go with the online folks.

[00:29:36]Pat BagleyNo, no, this is worth a whole new, uh, a different podcast.

[00:29:39]Daryl Caglewell, you know, our clients are newspapers, and it's newspapers who define us as editorial cartoonists, and we've never found a good market on the internet, and there's no culture for paying for content on the internet.

[00:29:52]Daryl CagleSo, We are living with newspapers and, newspapers have a largely elderly audience that has, grown to love newspapers and wants to keep the experience as, other news outlets have become more popular. A couple of interesting things, uh, you know, we, we look at the demographics of our Cagle.Com site and it is, Males over 65. And we look at the demographic of the people who watch our podcast on YouTube, and it is males over 65. So it's not only newspapers that are doing this, it's also the people who appreciate our art form tend to be the people that are also the audience for newspapers.

[00:30:38]Daryl CagleAnd It may be that the editors are not wrong in what they edit for their taste of their audience.

[00:30:44]Steve SackI really hesitate to agree with that. It seems like, you know, yes, the editors have gotten more squeamish about that sort of thing. But you look at the, you know, the great cartoonists before us.

[00:30:54]Steve SackHerblock or Oliphant or Mauldin or Conrad. There was no shortage of blood in their cartoons.

[00:31:01]Pat BagleyMhm. It's true.

[00:31:02]KALI also think what's interesting Daryl you, what you said just seemed to make so much sense, particularly editors in a business trying to do what they're, you know, customers. want. one of the curious things I discovered is that whenever I'm showing cartoons to the under twenties who didn't grow up with cartoons, they're not reading newspapers.

[00:31:20]KALThey love cartoons. But they're seeing them on the internet where it's hard, as you point out, to find a model, uh, where it can be monetized. Uh, people will love cartoons. People continue to love cartoons. But it's trying to find a way to make people pay for them. That's going to be the challenge.

[00:31:38]Daryl CagleI think to our credit, to the cartoonist credit, the cartoonists draw what they want with really, without regard to whether editors are gonna wanna print it.

[00:31:46]Daryl CagleUh, it's rare that people, soften their cartoon for the editors. editorial cartoonists, do really strong stuff. this hasn't. impacted what cartoonists

[00:31:58]Daryl Cagledraw.

[00:31:59]Steve Sack

[00:31:59]Steve SackGood.

[00:32:03]KALYou know, they got to eat those cartoons. I've got to eat. No, you're exactly right. That it doesn't impact the, what they draw, but, um, as you know, just in the business of trying to find a way to monetize it is going to be the challenge in the, in the years ahead. Um, and I suspect that there'll always be cartoons around, but they may take on different forms that work well on the internet.

[00:32:23]KALYeah.

[00:32:23]Pat BagleyYeah. So

[00:32:24]Daryl Caglego ahead, Pat. This is a wonderful cartoon. You got Xi Jinping sitting with Trump who's got his fingers stuck in a Chinese, finger trap puzzle. The Chinese puzzle. there just are not enough Chinese finger trap puzzle cartoons. That's so wonderful.

[00:32:40]Pat BagleyYeah, they did this cartoon with my editors actually.

[00:32:42]Pat BagleyWe're worried that it was maybe, um, culturally insensitive.

[00:32:46]Daryl CagleCulturally insensitive because it's a Chinese Finger trap puzzle,

[00:32:50]Pat BagleyI guess that was, that was the worry. We actually had a discussion whether we should run this or not. Um, but I forgot I did this.

[00:32:57]Pat BagleyThat's a good cartoon.

[00:32:58]Daryl CagleThat's a great cartoon.

[00:33:00]Pat BagleyYou can look at your own cartoons, but that's pretty good. That's, that's, that's what you want. This was Trump's first major meeting with a foreign leader. Okay.

[00:33:10]Daryl CagleAnd here you've got the irony. Can you believe Hunter Biden using his dad to get ahead as Trump's kids are all vultures, chewing the flesh off the corpse of irony.

[00:33:22]Daryl CagleUh, corpse of irony is just funny. You know, irony has lost all its meaning now. Uh, we used to think irony was important. It used to be one of the things cartoonists relied on, but, uh. It's just so pervasive in the world, it's hardly distinctive.

[00:33:39]Pat BagleyYou say, irony is dead. I guess it is.

[00:33:42]KALYeah, yeah. And isn't that ironic?

[00:33:48]Daryl CagleYeah, this is funny. The Donald Trump presidential lie berry. What do you mean there's not a non fiction section? this is funny. The library is a giant casino is funny.

[00:33:58]Pat BagleyI could ask you guys, is Trump going to have a library? Is he actually going to have a presidential library?

[00:34:04]Daryl CagleTrump and library don't really go together. I wonder if he, when he was last in a library. That's such an

[00:34:09]Pat Bagleyoxymoron. A Trump library.

[00:34:12]Daryl CagleSo here we've got Trump's lies as some giant snot monster. Welcome to the awards are exposed the disgusting fake news media. Uh, this, I guess, was when Trump didn't want to go to the big press gala.

[00:34:25]Daryl CagleWell, he didn't, he

[00:34:26]Pat Bagleydidn't do the usual presidential stuff, where you gotta meet the public and you gotta promote culture and you gotta promote literature and all that kind

[00:34:32]KALAnd also excellent, excellent body fluids. I just have to come in.

[00:34:37]Daryl CagleYes. I like the body fluids. I think snot is more acceptable than blood.

[00:34:41]Pat BagleyOkay. So we just found out this last week from, military advisors that he didn't want to be bothered with, our veterans, our soldiers, our military. he didn't want people who'd been. It would lost limbs in war to be around because it was just too gross for him. again, one of those things that actually he said, he did.

[00:34:57]Daryl CagleI guess the, the issue I'd have with this cartoon is that he probably wouldn't be watching it on TV. True.

[00:35:03]Pat BagleyYou got me there.

[00:35:04]Daryl CagleAnd, I thought this was just a, a wonderful, beautiful looking cartoon, the, the elephant with the Trump floaty as the giant waves of scandals is about to crash on him. The composition of this is funny, the little guy in the corner, the big waves, with all of the waves pointing at the, the elephant, the scandal waves.

[00:35:22]Daryl CagleI look at this and it's pretty, and it's, A lovely composition and all the waves pointing at him is, just a wonderful device. And I love this cartoon.

[00:35:32]Pat BagleyOh, thank you. And I grew up in California, so I know waves.

[00:35:35]KALWell, the idea is so simple, yet you send across really complex and powerful messages. It's fantastic.

[00:35:43]Daryl CaglePat has been removed from the building. Okay. So, uh, Cal, the press briefing we all crave is Dr. Fauci says, for the safety of our citizens, I'd recommending a complete lockdown and quarantine. you've got Trump's brain in a box, quarantined. that would be excellent. Yes,

[00:36:03]KALindeed. These things were comical in their own way, but I was just trying to find a way to capture it in an amusing fashion.

[00:36:09]Daryl CaglePat, welcome back.

[00:36:11]Pat BagleyOkay, I've just got a few minutes here because the phone really is about to go, and I've got two deadlines.

[00:36:16]Daryl CagleOkay, we're gonna zip through Cal's cartoons. Cal, just tell us something about each of these as they come up. Uh, here we got Stop the Madness, Chaney, and the big row of Republicans all following Trump's big lie.

[00:36:26]Daryl CagleThat's great.

[00:36:26]KALYou'll find that there's so many trying to find new ways to say that the Republicans are blindly following an idiot. Yeah. All these Trump critics are alike, as they say.

[00:36:36]Daryl CagleI've got to say though, I do whatever I can to avoid drawing crowd scenes. And you seem to love the crowd scenes.

[00:36:45]KALOh yeah, he's good at that.

[00:36:46]KALYeah, that's right. You know, I just don't have enough. Time in my life to do it. So it means that sleep gets good. I mean, I sleep amounts when I have very complicated cartoons. , ,

[00:36:55]Daryl Cagleyou know, people, email me They've got a great idea for the cartoon and they want me to draw their idea.

[00:37:01]Daryl CagleAnd very often, typically it is, there's an army on the left and it's facing off against the army on the right and the sky is filled with helicopters. It's as though, they have no respect for my laziness.

[00:37:14]Steve SackA simple image is really nice in a cartoon when it's just, you know, just a few elements and the simplicity is really beautiful. But sometimes a cartoon is epic and a cartoon on this scale. I love these kind of things. Oh, yeah. There's so many details to look at, and you just take in the whole scope.

[00:37:30]Daryl CagleYeah, and you, and the complexity of it is made simple by it being a line.

[00:37:34]Daryl CagleExactly.

[00:37:35]Pat BagleyYeah, no, wonderful.

[00:37:37]Daryl CagleHere you've got, uh, Trump with the world, ready to explode with all the dynamite. Trump says, if I lose the election, I would definitely consider a transfer of power.

[00:37:46]KALThat's such a great Trump, by the way. I, um, I'm proud of this cartoon because I actually did this the September before the election and, uh, you know, then we find five weeks, five months later, this is exactly what he tried to do.

[00:38:01]Steve SackYeah. Is this watercolor?

[00:38:02]KALUh, this could have been watercolor. Probably is.

[00:38:06]Steve SackYeah, I mean, you were talking earlier about watercolor versus digital. But, uh, KAL, you can do things with watercolor. No one else can.

[00:38:14]Daryl CagleYeah, this looks like real watercolor and not digital.

[00:38:18]KALYeah, I'd do a little bit of both.

[00:38:20]Daryl CagleSo here you've got Trump in his straitjacket being carried away by the cops.

[00:38:24]Daryl CagleHe's yelling, treacherous traitors. I am... Mentally fit for office. I demand to speak to my lawyer. And then they're dragging Rudy Giuliani along in his street jacket. Coming boss. This is, uh, this is great.

[00:38:38]KALYes, um, all I can say is that, you know, this is something that happens in my dreams.

[00:38:45]KALTo see these guys in straight jackets, but maybe that day will come.

[00:38:49]Daryl CagleHa ha ha ha. Another thing editors don't print is vertical format cartoons. but you know, uh, sometimes you just gotta do it.

[00:38:56]KALWith some, this could have been spun around to be horizontal as well.

[00:38:59]Daryl CagleSo here you've got, the two headed, beast, uh, elephant and hippo, and Trump's on top and says, Republicans used to be a party of truth and honor, but now they follow me, so I have designed a new party symbol that better reflects today's Republicans.

[00:39:13]Daryl CagleNot elephants. Hippocrates. That's very nice. Well,

[00:39:17]KALthis is a, I took out this, this is Steve Sack-ian, you know, this is, the only reason I did this is because Steve inspired me with his crazy creatures.

[00:39:25]Pat BagleyYeah,

[00:39:25]Daryl Caglethat's a fun thing to paint. And again, it looks like a real watercolor.

[00:39:28]KALIt is. Yeah. Yes, that, that was

[00:39:30]Daryl CagleFrame it and put it on the wall. Here's another nice real watercolor. you see the bright, sunset and Trump says the sun is not sitting on me. Those cheating Democrats are raising the horizon. That's great.

[00:39:42]KALThank you. Thank you. Well, I was actually. I was playing around with sunsets, and then when I was in the middle of doing it, I said, Ooh, there's a cartoon in here somewhere, so that's kind of how it arrived.

[00:39:52]KALYeah. I've done that too,

[00:39:53]Steve Sackwhen I made images that were just fun to draw, and then you have to find a... political situation to use it.

[00:39:59]Daryl CagleYep. So here's Trump at his, coronation combo hanging of democracy as all the mega guys are fawning over him and paying attention to him, even as they're, destroying democracy.

[00:40:11]Daryl CagleThat's really very nice.

[00:40:13]KALwell you, what I love about this one, Daryl, is that we've talked before about the red tie as being iconic for him, Uhhuh , and we find different ways to use it. And this one, the red tie trail is like a ribbon. And then the payoff is that you see that it's a noose for the go around, uh, democracy.

[00:40:29]Daryl Caglethat's how I should have described the cartoon because this is all about using the tie as a prop, tying him to the hanging of democracy. And, that's the point of it. And. that's a lovely device.

[00:40:41]KALThank you. And it's also another example of Republicans, you know, falling for this guy.

[00:40:45]Daryl CagleHere, you've got the Republican elephant looking at Trump as he's threatening to slit the throat of democracy. A Republican says he was just minding his own business on January 6th when suddenly this passerby violently attacks his knife with her neck.

[00:41:01]KALsome cartoons are sight gags, some of them are word gags.

[00:41:05]KALAnd, if you can mix the two, that often can be quite fun. And this one is, I'd say, mostly a word gag. it could have been even more simply drawn, but, um, it's...

[00:41:14]Daryl CagleAnd also, you avoided having any blood, which makes people willing to print it.

[00:41:18]KALYes, and no snot as well. No snot.

[00:41:20]Daryl CagleNo bodily fluids whatsoever. So here you got the, Republican MAGA police with the, holding the postal service lady who says, But we're just delivering postal ballots to the people.

[00:41:33]Daryl CagleAnd Trump says, Oh yeah, with this tremendous magnifying glass, I see a huge fraud. Pence says, "That's a hand mirror, sir." This is, uh, this is just a cute everybody acting in character cartoon. Mm, mm.

[00:41:47]KALWell, it was right, it was before the election when the postal ballots were going to be introduced and the Republicans were trying to do everything they can to stop it because They felt that that would work against them.

[00:41:57]KALAnd so they're making stuff up, and this is Trump making stuff up here. Surprise.

[00:42:02]Pat BagleyTrump's hair here is perfect. It's just..

[00:42:04]Daryl CagleIt is. A wonderful thing about comic strips is, so much of the humor in comic strips is just the character acting like you know the character's gonna act and then it's gratifying to see them do what you thought they would do because that reinforces what you thought. And, uh, you know, there's just, there's very few characters in editorial cartoons that we can do that with, but, you know, Trump and Pence and, MAGA police and everybody just acting like they should act.

[00:42:30]Daryl CagleIt just makes for a very gratifying... personality cartoon.

[00:42:34]Pat BagleyOkay, guys, we're down to 1%. So, and I've got a cartoon to do.

[00:42:40]Daryl CagleOkay, we'll see you later, Pat. Thank you for joining us. Okay. Loved it. Bye Pat. See you later.

[00:42:45]Daryl CagleOkay. here you've got, all of the MAGA guys with, blood and soil, white power, Nazi sign, doing their, Heil Hitler salute to, Fuhrer Trump, who says, trust me, there's just so many good people here just trying to hail a taxi.

[00:43:00]KALYeah. And that was during the Charlottesville, event that took place, you know, early in his presidency, within a year, I believe. And it was a shocking thing to see. And he was, Being ambiguous enough to be able to lend credence to, the protesters there. And so I just felt I had to find a way to say, without...

[00:43:16]KALPutting Klu Klux Klan things on their head, Daryl. So, swastika in there. My apologies.

[00:43:21]Daryl CagleBut, you don't worry about that. When you're doing a cartoon for The Economist, it just runs in The Economist, right?

[00:43:26]KALYes.

[00:43:26]KALYeah, that's

[00:43:26]KALtrue.

[00:43:27]Daryl CagleOkay, uh, here you've got, uh, Snake Trump. He has swallowed the elephant, swallowed it like a pig through a snake. And, the media is saying, One year after the January 6th insurrection, how would you describe the Republican Party?

[00:43:42]Daryl CagleAnd Trump, the snake, says, delicious. He certainly did swallow them whole, and January 6th only seemed to help that.

[00:43:50]KALYeah, that's, it seems to be a common theme, because it is a common theme for his presidency. You'll see that a lot in cartoons. Uh, and this cartoon, I particularly like it, because I like drawing animals, like Steve, and I like to combine them with people.

[00:44:02]KALThat's kind of an old, cartoonist way. Ploy is to take real people and turn them into animals as a way of kind of demeaning them to some degree and Also to make it interesting for the viewer

[00:44:12]Daryl Caglehere you've got the Justice Department pulling down the justice statue like the Saddam statue and the impeachment police chatting with Trump saying the armed extremists who threatened you has been neutralized the justice being neutralized that is grim, but true.

[00:44:28]KALyou notice that some of the cartoons are black and white and some are in color. The cartoons that appear in The Economist are black and white and they can run, they could run them in color, but they're choosing, choosing to have them in black and white because they like the feeling that gives on the newspaper page.

[00:44:43]Daryl CagleI prefer black and white too.

[00:44:45]Steve SackThe line work. is so effective.

[00:44:48]Daryl CagleSo here you've got Mike Esper. He's tugging, Mad Dog Trump and holding him back with his tie leash. That's very nice. Well, I, uh... He was a moderating influence and this is what moderation looks like with Trump.

[00:44:59]KALExactly, he was talking about all the crazy things he had to stop Trump from doing. I included this cartoon in the mix because I just love... The Trump feeling, you know, his kind of bulldog craziness in this cartoon. Bulldog

[00:45:12]Daryl Caglecraziness, that's great. And here you got Trump talking to Putin. Putin says, Hello Donald, I hacked your last election, attacking your most defining national institution.

[00:45:22]Daryl CagleI intend to do it again, only this time with more precision. And Trump says, You had me at hello!

[00:45:32]KALThank you. Well, this cartoon ran just after the first meeting between the two, and there was an iconic photograph of the two of them talking like this, but nobody knew what they were saying to each other. And so I projected that I actually got some, you know, audio, and then this is what actually they said.

[00:45:48]Daryl CagleAnd here's a very nice, uh, explain this cartoon to us. This is, uh, Death, COVID, swinging his COVID mace, and USA the knight, and, Trump, uh, Opening up his shoe. Tell us about

[00:46:03]KALthis. Well, you guys, it's, boy, it seems like ancient history, the pandemic, and the craziness that went on there. But one of the things that everyone might remember is that while we were doing, during lockdown and before we were able to have medication to be able to alleviate the worst parts of this, that Trump was agitating to open up the economy because, obviously, He was seeing the drag it was having on his popularity, but everyone from, scientists who knew better and most people who knew the dangers of this were saying, idiocy, do not do that. So here I was doing a cartoon that was trying to say that this is what an idiotic thing to start taking off of your armor in the middle of a battle, essentially.

[00:46:46]KALAnd that's what he's trying to do to the US.

[00:46:48]Daryl CagleAnd here's another dragon cartoon, finally a sane and sensible president willing to take on Kim Jong un. That's Mitch McConnell getting burned up by Trump's dragon that he's riding on. Uh, very nice. I love dragon

[00:47:02]KALcartoons. Oh, I love drawing dragons.

[00:47:05]KALUh, it's kind of big, you know, talk about detail, it's kind of been, uh, just a, a bit of zen to start drawing a dragon and start doing all the scales it kind of occupies with me for an hour or two.

[00:47:14]Steve SackDragons and Godzilla's and monsters, yeah.

[00:47:17]Daryl Cagleso here's Trump barricaded in the Oval Office with all the furniture and he's saying the media's a threat, immigrants are a threat, Mueller's a threat, Democrats are a threat, allies are a threat, and his secretary says he's in his morning

[00:47:30]KALmeeting with his

[00:47:31]Daryl Cagleinner circle.

[00:47:32]Daryl CagleThe inner circle of barricaded furniture. lovely, lots of attitude cartoon.

[00:47:37]KALIt's one of my favorite cartoons because it first of all, what you try to do with the cartoon is save the joke for the last couple words so people will have a moment at the end. So it's a good combination of humorous drawing, humorous, timing with the words, but then talking about something that addresses a truth.

[00:47:56]KALVery effective. Thank you. Thank you.

[00:47:58]Daryl CagleI think this is the last one. We've got Trump the javelin thrower in a multi panel cartoon. He's running, throwing the javelin, bink the javelin, lands on the ground, short of constitutional democracy which is not suffering at all from his javelin throws and, is looking, very strong, like it is not going to suffer from anything Trump has to throw at it.

[00:48:20]Daryl CagleSo this is a nice optimistic cartoon.

[00:48:23]KALWell it was, you know, done after January 6th where, you know, it was clear in my mind that he was actually trying to overthrow the democracy people were trying to suggest, which was all sorts of other things. And, the punchline in this one is, at the bottom it says he's called the overthrower, where he, in this one he's throwing so many times and so many times he's failing.

[00:48:42]KALUm, this is what his intention is to go back and try it again. And if we let him, he would do it again. This would

[00:48:48]Steve Sackbe a great animated

[00:48:49]Pat Bagleycartoon.

[00:48:50]Daryl CagleIt would. You know, I'll bet he'd never put a thought into overthrowing democracy. He was just thinking that he wanted to win and it was all about him and, any mention of democracy comes only from the left.

[00:49:00]Daryl CagleAnd the right, doesn't recognize any of that. And, I, Kind of get a little bit of that. I feel like all of this, crazy election vote fighting nonsense just all grew out of Bush versus Gore, and that just made it all, standard, like, that's how you fight an election. you do all that legal nonsense at the end, and, he had his precedent.

[00:49:23]KALwell, my thought is that there is some, I think maybe where it is a little bit different in Trump's cl case is that he, and what will probably be discovered more as we go along is, is that he knew that he hadn't won and that he was going to, use extra legal ways to try to, guarantee that he stays in office.

[00:49:38]KALSo, in the case of, Bush Gore, everyone's trying to use legal ways. But now we're branching out those extra legal ways. And that's when we get in real dangerous waters.

[00:49:46]Steve SackI agree with you, Daryl, that, it seems like it's all about getting the most votes for your side, no matter what.

[00:49:52]Steve SackAnd the whole idea of trying to restrict voting or to make it harder for people to vote. That's all based on trying to, Make your side win and the other side lose, and it's not so much we want to destroy democracy as we want to win no matter what the cost is.

[00:50:06]Daryl CagleWell, on that note, that was our last cartoon, gentlemen, and thank you for being with us, I really appreciate it.

[00:50:13]Daryl CagleIt's wonderful to get you to finally do this, Steve, and wonderful to have our first outside cartoonist for the first time, Kal. And, Steve, I hope you'll come back because you have a vast archive on evergreen topics that we could do more podcasts on. And, I will twist your arm.

[00:50:29]Steve SackYeah, why didn't you use my best cartoons?

[00:50:31]Daryl CagleI love all your stuff, Steve and I'm just, uh, I'm a big fan and I'm... Oh, thank you, Daryl.

[00:50:37]Steve SackAnd I'm honored to be on the same podcast with KAL and Pat.

[00:50:41]KALYes.

[00:50:41]Steve SackAmong my favorite cartoonists, too.

[00:50:43]KALThank you, I appreciate that. Yeah, it was a, it's a great combination.

[00:50:47]KALAnd poor Daryl is now going to spend 12 hours editing this.

[00:50:50]Daryl CagleHa ha ha ha, uh, anybody watching this is not going to know how much I edit out. and that is, uh, I guess a hidden blessing. So, thank you so much. And remember to subscribe to the Caglecast wherever you're watching or listening today. And, the Caglecast is available in both video and audio versions. So if you don't see the cartoons, go to Cagle.com or Apple Podcasts, or YouTube or Spotify to see the video podcast. Uh, one way I like to see it is on, the PodCruncher app, because it really is better in video. But, if you only get audio, it is still the best podcast around. And gentlemen, thank you for being here. I really enjoyed it. And, I hope to have you guys, back again. This was fun. It was crazy and an editing challenge, but it was fun.

[00:51:35]KALIt was fun. It was my guys. Great stuff.

[00:51:39]Daryl CagleSee you later.