CARTOON: “Drain The Swamp”

From Clay Jones on his political cartoon “Drain The Swamp,” how Donald Trump made campaign promises to do so, and how he appears to be doing the opposite

Donald Trump promised to “drain the swamp,” and around 60 million Americans wanted the swamp drained so badly that they gave the presidency to a racist, xenophobic, sexually assaulting doofus. Thanks, America.

So how does President-elect Trump go about “draining the swamp?” He appoints the very creatures responsible for contaminating the swamp. He’s made Republican Party Chairman Reince Priebus his Chief of Staff. While it is a wise move to give that position to someone who knows Washington, he’s the very definition of insider.

Other names popping up for cabinet posts and important positions is Alabama Senator Jeff Sessions, who has been in Washington since 1996; John Bolton (not Michael Bolton, the homogenized R&B singer), who’s been in D.C. since 1974; Rudy Giuliani, who can’t be called an outsider; and a literal Newt. Newt Gingrich will serve in some role, and he’s been sludging up D.C. since 1979. This is not swamp draining.

There are a few outsiders who could end up with appointments that should scare the living life out of you. People such as Sarah Palin; former Arizona governor Jan Brewer; Kansas governor Sam Brownback, who’s pretty much destroyed that state; Ben Carson; Joe Arpaio, who was recently defeated as that racist sheriff in Arizona (he’s still racist); and David Clarke, the very scary sheriff in Milwaukee.

In addition to all those terrible people, he has his veep, Mike Pence, running his transition team, and he’s relying on his children, Ivanka, Uday, and Qusay, to pitch in with whatever horrible suggestions they may have.

Another high-profile appointment is Steve Bannon. While Trump rightfully asked his racist supporters to stop assaulting people, he went and appointed an anti-semitic racist as chief White House strategist. Bannon is the guy who changed Breitbart from a right-wing agenda-driven fake news site to an anti-semitic, racist right-wing agenda-driven fake news site. If you ever want to check out the comments under the racist stories in Breitbart, I suggest you do it before you shower. The site is a magnet for white supremacists. Just the kind of people wearing sheets and attacking minorities to celebrate Trump’s victory.

One of the most interesting things about Bannon is that he is very much in favor of draining the swamp. He’s been at war with Speaker of the House Paul Ryan, and he’s basically a despicable human being nobody likes except Donald Trump and white supremacists. They love that guy. In the future he’s going to devise “strategy” with people who he used to strategize to eliminate. Trump is replacing water moccasins and alligators with Swamp Thing.

Trump has always surrounded himself with gross people, so it shouldn’t be any surprise his administration will be the ickiest ever. The only surprise so far is that we’re not hearing Ted Nugent or Gary Busey being considered for anything.

None of the people on Team Trump are the sort you’d even trust to watch your goldfish, less enough run the State Department. Have you ever overfed a goldfish? It’s not pretty. When my son was five, he dumped an entire container of food into an aquarium. I’ll just describe it as “they do not stop eating.”

I don’t think these people will stop eating either. It’s going to be a very ridiculous four years.

Someone on Twitter asked me today how I pick which idea to draw since I must be having several a day since Trump was elected. I have been. I started one this morning on Hillary and Comey, and I wasn’t feeling it, so I switched to the swamp idea. I might go back to the Hillary/Comey thing, but there seems to be breaking news several times a day. Hopefully, I can get a few non-Trump cartoons in at some point.

To answer that question: How do I pick an idea out of several? If you get several ideas a day, not all of them will be good. I was talking to a fellow musician once who told me he wrote five songs a day. I thought, “Those have really gotta be some crappy songs.” And they were. Total crap. He’d play open mics and it was like an endless loop of Oasis’ “Wonderwall.” It didn’t help that the guy only knew three chords.

I try to pick the idea that sucks the least (and someone always thinks what I settled on sucks). I also try to pick the most important issue, the funniest idea, and sometimes the one that has the best chance at being published the most (which is really hard to predict).

And now I have “Wonderwall” stuck in my head. Crap.

claytoonz.com/2016/11/14/drain-the-swamp

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