Trump's Threats

How to draw it?

The difficulty is knowing how to draw him, again and again and again….

The vital importance of freedom of the press has always been front and center in my life, having grown up during the Civil Rights Movement and Watergate. As a budding cartoonist, I recall feeling proud that the cartoonist for the Washington Post (my hometown), Herblock, was instrumental in bringing down President Richard Nixon.

Yesterday, while interviewing The New Yorker editor Emma Allen, we talked about press freedom. At the end of our conversation, I asked Emma about the current climate for the press from the incoming administration, and she said that she and other editors are having “meeting after meeting” with the magazine’s lawyers to fully grasp how best to handle the hostility and threats towards the media. However, our conversation generally centered on women cartoonists and freedom, or lack thereof, over the years, which was more about cultural opression.

In terms of how cartoonists fare in terms of defamation lawsuits here in the US, there was a landmark Supreme Court decision in 1988, Hustler v Falwell, that pertains to cartoon rights.

“Hustler Magazine, Inc. v. Falwell, 485 U.S. 46 (1988), is a landmark decision by the Supreme Court of the United States in which the Court held that parodies of public figures, even those intending to cause emotional distress, are protected by the First and Fourteenth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution.”

Jerry Falwell sued Hustler magazine for running a parody, a fake advertisement, using his name. Instead of trying to paraphrase the ruling, this is from Wikipedia:

“In the case, Hustler magazine ran a full-page parody ad against televangelist and political commentator Jerry Falwell Sr., depicting him as an incestuous drunk who had sex with his mother in an outhouse. The ad was marked as a parody that was "not to be taken seriously". In response, Falwell sued Hustler and the magazine's publisher Larry Flynt for intentional infliction of emotional distress, libel, and invasion of privacy, but Flynt defended the ad's publication as protected by the First Amendment. In an 8–0 decision, the Court held that the emotional distress inflicted on Falwell by the ad was not a sufficient reason to deny the First Amendment protection to speech that is critical of public officials and public figures. Constitutional limits to defamation liability cannot be circumvented for claims arising from speech by asserting an alternative theory of tort liability such as intentional infliction of emotional distress.”

The takeaway for cartoonists from this is that we have the right to make fun of public figures.

Right now, Trump is all about threatening publications, although I have never heard him threaten cartoonists. If I know editorial cartoonists (and I know a lot of them, being one myself), I know they won’t be intimidated. Emma Allen said she is seeing more cartoons being submitted that are about the current political climate, although she does sense a measure of Trump fatigue.

Trump is now suing the DeMoine Register for running a poll before the election that showed him trailing Vice President Harris.

“It’s clear that Trump is waging war on the press,” said Samantha Barbas, a professor at the University of Iowa College of Law whose book, “Actual Malice,” is about the Supreme Court’s most famous defamation case. “Trump and his lawyers are going to use any legal claim that they think has a chance of sticking. They’ll cast a wide net to carry out this vendetta.”

Ms. Barbas added that lawsuits “are not so much geared toward winning as much as threatening.”

Speaking of Trump fatigue, I can look back on the drawings I did when he was first elected, and see a similar pattern. At the start of his presidency, he was threatening the press—perhaps not to the extent he is now. If I recall, he eased up on those threats when in office, but this time he may have key attack-dogs in place to continue the work.

CNN reports that a key House panel has voted in secret to release the ethics report on Matt Gaetz, and do so after members of Congress have left for the holidays. Speaker Johnson opposes this; it will be interesting to see if he or Trump can stop it.

House Republicans and Trump are calling for an investigation into Liz Cheney for her role as “instigator” of the Janaury 6th Committee Investigations.

Heather Cox Richardson reports on an interesting, somewhat hopeful thought. Mitch McConnell is leaving his leadership role in the Senate, and says he “feels liberated.” He also seems to be opposing some of the things/people Trump is proposing, among them the nomination of RFK Jr as head of Health and Human Services. McConnell will “chair the Rules Committee, which gives him a chance to stop MAGA senators from trying to abandon the power of the Senate and permit Trump to get his way. McConnell has said that ‘[d]efending the Senate as an institution and protecting the right to political speech in our elections remain among my longest-standing priorities.’”

I hope McConnell is successful in stopping the soon-to-be president from bulldozing his way through the Senate. While not particularly trustworthy, in my opinion, perhaps if McConnell is not leading the Senate, he will be more true to what he says. But, HCR says, “McConnell’s fierce use of power in the past suggests that the Senate’s giving up its constitutional power to bend to Trump’s will isn’t likely to happen, either.” Let’s hope she’s right.

I think Trump fatigue is real, I feel it. But I also think the closer we get to his entry into the White House, the more energized the opposition will become—although I know many are working hard now. Unlike Herblock’s Nixon drawings, cartoons may not specifically effect tangable change, but they are part of the fabric of free speech that is crucial, and they can alter how people see the world. Cartoons are quick opinion pieces, plus they help us laugh.

In 1984, I was thrilled to meet the editorial cartoonist Herblock. My friend and New Yorker cover artist, Roxie Munro, had curated a show of New Yorker cartoons for a gallery in DC, and I attended the opening. To my suprise, Herblock showed up! Here he is looking at MY CARTOONS. I show them below, but the one he is pointing at in the photo is my first cartoon in the magazine, and the one above it was my first editorial cartoon published in The New Yorker. Having ambitions to be an editorial cartoon since adolescence, it was beyond exciting to meet him. He was sweet and gracious to me. (why didn’t we take more/better photos back then??)

Herbert Block (Herblock) of the Washington Post, and me.

Thanks for being here, see you tomorrow.