In your many New Yorker covers you do not present yourself as a political artist. Is this a secret (or not so secret) desire?
It’s a secret because I haven’t had much success.
You have told me that your current state of mind an acute case of Trump Derangement Syndrome (TDS). Like the Coronavirus we’ve lived through this before but hoped we were immune to it. Ha! We’re showing your unpublished work because he’s back. How are you coping?|
I’m coping better this time. Although I did suffer from TDS during his first term, I seem to have built up some immunity over the last four years.
You’ve said “I have inadvertently documented my descent into TDS madness” and you’re considering re-pitching your earlier political ideas. What happened to your pitches last term?
The political cover ideas I have pitched since the beginning of Trump’s first term is a motley collection — some are rough pencils and others are close to publishable (technically) while the rest are somewhere in between. A few of them deal with Trump adjacent topics like Ukraine and Roe v. Wade. Many were a reaction to one of the countless outrageous things that Trump said or did. Soon forgotten because of the next wave of craziness. Several are more recent and were sent during the current election cycle.
You are not typecast as a satirist per see, am I right?
My published covers to date have all been sort of genteel, so I had no reason to expect that I could switch lanes once Trump was first elected. I was obsessed. I can see looking back that most were unpublishable. It has been a journey of stubbornness and stupidity. Stupidity because I was risking annoyance at the receiving end.
How do you feel — and what is your strategy, if any — for dealing with Jan 20 and beyond?
Like most journeys, it was not a complete waste of time. In the last few months I have submitted political cover ideas that were better received and even considered (if only briefly) for publication. By submitting ideas and then seeing what was chosen week after week, I gained a better understanding of what could work for me. A unique voice is important. In my case this includes the use of typography, or an unexpected approach that the best of the New Yorker’s great political cartoonists would be unlikely to propose.
And what do you think that is?
Perhaps the best typographic sketch is the one with the central ‘U’ in TRUMP used to represent a chasm dividing the nation. The most promising reaction I received was the Charlie Brown and Lucy football cover pitched shortly after Kamala entered the race and was seemingly doing better in the polls than Trump.
Cartoons are not great weapons when your audience, including me, is in an echo chamber. Half the nation loves Trump or MAGA or worse. Another percentage is just settling in for the time being. What is the goal of your satiric politics?
In his first term, I had no goal in mind. Each sketch was just an expression of my exasperation. It’s true that the audience for political cartoons is, as you say, an echo chamber. These days, that’s probably true of most forms of political discourse. I’d like to be among the less engaged percentage you mentioned and just settle in for a while. That would be the smart way to go. During his first term, I did have an acute case of TDS. Not so much now. The Trump enterprise seems more surreal than menacing this time around. Like a bad sitcom rerun with the same tired jokes and a similar cast of characters chewing up the scenery. I think the recent sketches that I submitted during the 2024 campaign are more measured than the ones from his first term. I feel more capable of providing a detached perspective – and with any luck a bit of humor. So I do have a goal now: to try to use what I’ve learned. We’ll see how that goes.
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