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Doonesbury Trolls Republicans, Perfectly Capturing Their Spineless Nature In The Trump Era

December 26, 2018 by Samuel Warde No Comments

Garry Trudeau 2014 Stanford University (uncropped)

Described by Trump as “overrated,” “a sleazeball,” “a jerk” and “a total loser,” Garry Trudeau has been mocking Republicans for nearly 50 years – and counting.

Garry Trudeau, the creator of Doonesbury and the first cartoonist to win the Pulitzer Prize, has been mocking Republicans since the 1970s and as we begin saying our farewells to 2018, now is the perfect time to take a look at one of his better cartoons this year.

On August 12th, Trudeau mocked Republicans in a hilarious cartoon. He had been posting classic cartoons from the 1990s for several days – many of them dealing with Richard Nixon.

This new cartoon struck at the heart of Republican complacency in the Trump era.

The cartoon begins with a sad looking Republican congressman appearing to lament the  loss of his spine.

A narrator enters picture asking what happened to the conservative’s spine: “Hey Mr. Legislator! What the heck happened to your spine?he asked.

Continuing, the narrator reminded the legislator that Republicans used to stand for something – once upon a time – but apparently not anymore during the Trump era.

The legislator’s spine continued to worsen as the narrator listed several of the Republican flip-flops on issues such as tariffs, on strong alliances, on pushing back against brutal regimes, deficits… The congressman eventually folded over double in the now-complete absence of a spine.

Check it out for yourself in the tweet, below, or you can go to The Washington Post website’s Doonesbury page and see it there and scroll through some other Doonesbury cartoons.

Trudeau also has been mocking Trump since the 1980s.

Democracy Now host Amy Goodman interviewed Trudeau in 2016 regarding the release of his new bound collection of cartoons titled: “Yuge!: 30 Years of Doonesbury on Trump.”

Goodman describes Trudeau’s work on Trump in the preface to the interview as follows:

Cartoonist Garry Trudeau has been writing about Trump and a possible run for the presidency for nearly 30 years, prompting Trump to call him “a third-rate talent,” “a sleazeball,” “a jerk” and “a total loser.” […] In September 1987, Trudeau published a series of comic strips that now seem prophetic. In one strip, reporters ask Trump a series of questions about his political ambitions to run for Congress, and Trump responds, “President, think president.” Trump has remained a frequent character in “Doonesbury” ever since, giving Trudeau a chance to make fun of everything from Trump’s hair to his ego to his rampant use of insults.

Here’s a prophetic cartoon from 1999 that went viral during the 2016 presidential campaign. [Snopes published an article explaining that the cartoon was mocking Trump’s 2000 presidential campaign, after people began attributing the cartoon to Trump’s 2016 presidential run.]

One of my favorites spoofs a White House press conference with Sarah Huckabee Sanders being grilled by Roland Hedley, a recurring Doonesbury character inspired by veteran reporter Sam Donaldson.

“Sarah, if you could just clear up one thing for me…” Hedley began. “As you know, chief of staff Kelly has reportedly been calling the president an ‘idiot,’ joining Reince Priebus and Steven Mnuchin who also called him an ‘idiot,'” he continued.

“But Rex Tillerson called him a ‘moron,’ H.R. McMaster called him a ‘dope,’ and Gary Cohn said he was ‘dumb as s***. So which one is it? We’ve been getting very mixed messages!” he said, hoping to get a clarification from Sanders.

In true Huckabee-Sanders fashion, her character responded: “Look, the president is a stable genius. He’s been very clear on that.”

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