Kids, I can’t give you the super-long blog that you deserve to go with this cartoon. I have to be at an event in about 30 minutes in Washington, DC, and I haven’t looked to see how many metro stops that is, and I still need to get dressed and make myself smell good.
I started this cartoon at home, worked on it some more on the train, and finished it in my hotel room. After that, I went to Ben’s Chili Bowl, which is an institution in this city and only two stops from my hotel on the green line. And now I kinda want a nap because of those half-smoke dogs.
Anyway, Marco Rubio is currently doing a lot of duties in the Trump regime. He’s the Secretary of State, in charge of the National Archives, director of USAID, and now he’s the National Security Adviser, which was dumped on him after Trump demoted Mike Waltz to the role of Ambassador to the United Nations.
The ambassadorship to the UN would be an important job in any other administration, but not this one. Trump would rather pull out of the UN than participate in it. The ambassadorship to the UN is about as important in the Trump regime as the Secretary of Education.
The last person to be Secretary of State while also serving as National Security Adviser was Henry Kissinger, and Marco Rubio is not Henry Kissinger.
Marco struggles to be Marco. He has no firm commitment to any political position because Trump might tell him to change one, or two, or several.
Marco is not the dumbest Republican in Washington. I wouldn’t put him down with Tommy Tuberville, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Lauren Boebert, Marsha Blackburn, or Cindy Hyde-Smith, but he’s no Katie Porter either. Sorry, I couldn’t think of any current Republicans to use an example of a smart person.
Senator Tammy Duckworth said there is “no way he [Rubio] can do that and do it well.” When he was just the Secretary of State, he wasn’t doing that one job well. And who can say he ever did his Senate job well?
Duckworth also said, “There’s no way he can carry … that entire load on his own.”
Marco was in the Signal chat group leaking out war plans, and he didn’t notice there was a stranger in the group.
Trump is just dumping shit off on Marco, who doesn’t even have enough of a backbone to say stop. But I hope he learns how to say stop by the time Trump gives him a fifth job…
Shedeur Sanders, who played quarterback for the University of Colorado, and his father, Deion Sanders, who is the head coach, was predicted by draft experts to be selected in the first round. Many saw him going to the Saints, who had the ninth pick, and who need not just a quarterback to build the franchise around, but also immediately. The concern for Saints fans, which I’m one of, was that he wouldn’t still be around at number nine.
On Thursday night, the Saints were on the board just as I was in line to get on my plane in Chicago. I was able to see who the Saints selected before my plane took off, and it was Kelvin Banks, an offensive tackle from the University of Texas. It will be his job in the near future to protect the Saints quarterback, who will NOT be Shedeur Sanders.
Then Sanders started falling and was even available to the Saints when their next pick came up, number 40 in the second round. And they did select a quarterback in the second…who was NOT Shedeur Sanders. They selected Tyler Shough from Louisville. The Saints selected four more players before Shedeur was taken in the fifth round by the Cleveland Browns.
During Shedeur’s free fall to the fifth round before the Browns ended his suffering, he got a phone call. He received a call during the second round from someone claiming to be Mickey Loomis, the general manager of the Saints, who said he was about to draft him.
Shedeur later said he knew it was a prank because no one is supposed to have his number, but he didn’t know. You see in the video that he’s clearly distressed from it while having a draft party with his friends and family. So, how did the prankster get the number? (snip-MORE)
If they weren’t so pathetic, you might could possibly be sad for some MAGAts. Take Juanita Broaddrick as an example, whose entire national profile is built upon debunked claims she was raped by Bill Clinton in the 1970s and who is now a full-fledged lying MAGAt.
After Canada’s Conservative Party Leader Pierre Poilievre distanced himself from Donald Trump, Broaddrick claimed he would lose the election because Canada loved Trump so much, which didn’t make any sense.
If Canadians loved Trump so much, then why did they just elect Liberal Mark Carney to become their new Prime Minister? That’s like denying Trump’s current favorability numbers. They suck.
There’s also the fact that Trump lost this election for the Conservatives. The Conservatives were ahead by double digits when Trump entered office last January, then he started barking at Canada, waged a tariff war, and repeatedly insulted them by claiming they should be America’s 51st state.
If Donald Trump had kept his mouth shut and had waited at least 100 days for his stupid tariff war, Poilievre would be Prime Minister today.
Yesterday, thanks to Donald Trump, Canadian Liberals won. Trump is now internationally toxic. Everything Trump touches…dies. Super Bowl champion running back Sequon Barkley played golf with Trump a few days ago, and now I expect his knees to give out during the preseason. Trump is poison. I would tell you to ask Elon, but he hasn’t figured it out yet.
Pierre didn’t just lose his race for Prime Minister, he also lost his seat in parliament. (snip-MORE)
A four-year old cancer patient deported by Ann Telnaes
The boy and his sister, both U.S. citizens, were deported to Honduras with their undocumented mother Read on Substack
On Tuesday, the Department of Health and Human Services and the Food and Drug Administration announced a series of measures to phase out eight artificial food dyes and colorings from America’s food supply by the end of next year. Get ready for boring Cheetos.
RFK Jr, the nation’s laughingstock of a Health Secretary, said, to a crowd of “Make America Health Again” supporters (that’s a thing?), “I just want to urge all of you, it’s not the time to stop; it’s the time to redouble your efforts, because we have them on the run now, and we are going to win this battle.” Who do we have on the run? Food colorers? The Easter Bunny? He also said, “And four years from now, we’re going to have most of these products off the market, or you will know about them when you go to the grocery store.”
Are they sure that brain worm is dead?
FDA Commissioner Dr. Marty Makary said the agencies are looking to revoke authorization for two synthetic food colorings and to work with the food industry to eliminate six remaining synthetic dyes used in cereal, ice cream, snacks, yogurts, and more. They’re going to fuck up ice cream.
He said, “Today, the FDA is taking action to remove petroleum-based food dyes from the U.S. food supply and medications. For the last 50 years, American children have increasingly been living in a toxic soup of synthetic chemicals.”
Now get this. These bans will be voluntary with the food companies. RFK Jr. said, “We don’t have an agreement; we have an understanding.” Good luck with that, Mr. Wormy Bear Killer.
The food companies would like an agreement, and that is for there to be one federal regulation on food dyes, and regulations from every state. Remember state rights? That will be the case for abortions but not for the color in Cheetos. (Snip-MORE + Chicago trip stuff)
======================
The three branches of government, 2025 by Ann Telnaes
At 1 a.m. today, the Supreme Court paused the deportation of immigrants who are subject Donald Trump’s abuse of the Alien Enemies Act (a measure that’s only supposed to be used during an invasion or times of war), just as the Trump regime was on the verge of flying a group of Venezuelans from Texas to El Salvador to rot in that nation’s hellhole of a prison.
Breaking news at 1 a.m. is usually about an explosion, an invasion, a tsunami, a tweet from Trump containing an incomprehensible new word, but rarely a Supreme Court ruling.
SCOTUS had previously told the regime that it’d be OK if they used the illegal Alien Enemies Act, just so long as each immigrant (and maybe US citizen) received due process first. The regime apparently ignored that last part about due process and was about to go all-skippy with deporting more Venezuelans.
The court ordered the Trump administration to respond to the emergency appeal once a federal appeals court in Louisiana takes action in the case. The court said, “The government is directed not to remove any member of the putative class of detainees from the United States until further order of this court.” That means the regime will probably go ahead and do it.
SCOTUS did not explain the ruling, maybe because it was 1 a.m. and a rumor started that Denny’s was about to close, and Sotomayor is a real grouch if she doesn’t get her Moons Over My Hammy.
But we probably don’t need an explanation for why the only two dissenters were (be ready to be surprised) Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito (OK, that wasn’t surprising).
Why would those two oppose delaying the deportation of immigrants without due process and support the regime violating the last order from SCOTUS? There are several possible reasons, and I’m sure none of them are good.
The first reason could, they’re fascist goons.
The second one could be that they just don’t give a shit about the Constitution and know this is the side they’re supposed to be on.
The third reason could be that they don’t care what the issue is and all they need is to be pointed in the direction Trump’s going, and they will follow.
The fourth reason could be that it’s booty night, Clarence doesn’t want to upset Ginny Thomas, and Samuel is hoping Mrs. Alito will help raise his flag.
The fifth reason could be that they’re both corrupt and were bought off to vote this way.
Even Trump’s justices, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett, voted for this delay.
These guys would deport Jesus, especially since he’s not a blue-eyed blonde like White Christians make him out to be.
This part of the blog is short because I want to clean my apartment before I fly to Chicago on Monday. I like coming home to a clean apartment.
I have a beef, and it’s not the Italian beef sandwich I’m planning to try in Chicago: I may be starting a fight I don’t want to fight, but dammit. Somebody has to.
A caption contest is where a cartoonist draws a cartoon, but doesn’t finish writing it. He creates an image and leaves a blank speech bubble/balloon. He then invites the readers to fill in the bubble and makes a contest out of it. It’s fun for the readers, gets them to engage with the cartoonist and the publication, and brings more hits and views to the publication’s website. I always felt it was a cheap way to make readers come back to look at other same page, and I openly admitted that when I did a caption contest for The Free Lance-Star. I hated the caption contest, but knew my readers loved it and my editors liked the views. I don’t see anything wrong ethically with the caption contest because I don’t see it as political cartooning. I saw it as a newspaper feature similar to the crossword puzzle, the jumble, or today’s Wordle. I’ll occasionally bump into a reader who’ll bring up the caption contest…that I hated.
My friend Walt Handelsman is doing a caption contest, and he does it well.
I saw something similar last night that’s kinda similar to the caption contest, but it’s entirely unethical, diminishes political cartooning, lazy, and is screwing readers over.
This is what I saw, and it’s by Daryl Cagle, who operates the largest syndication company for political cartoons.
If this were just a game for his website, I’d think nothing of it, but it’s not a game.
Daryl is shopping for his reader to write his ideas, and then he plans to sell them. If he does manage to sell them, they won’t be next to a crossword puzzle, but on the opinion page. It’s not like editors will care if they suck, and they will. And if he sells them, he’s not sharing the money with the person who wrote the idea. They’ll just get an “attribution.”
Remember my blog about why I don’t use cartoon ideas I didn’t write? The reason boils down to ethics, which Daryl doesn’t have. Even though I might be the goofiest guy in this industry, I take this industry seriously. I care about my work. Obviously, Daryl doesn’t care about his. He once drew two versions of a cartoon, one version from the Right and the other from the Left. It was a total hack job. He doesn’t care.
I commented on Daryl’s Facebook page, telling him to write his own cartoons. He replied, “According to the Pulitzer people, we’re all just illustrators now, Clay.” That’s pretty much true as the Pulitzers have taken away the contest category for political cartoons and combined it with “illustrated reporting” or some shit like that, but I wasn’t going to let Daryl use it as an excuse.
I replied to Dayl’s reply, saying, “Then why are you helping the Pulitzers diminish us? You already used the anonymous cartoonist to tell editors and publishers that we’re not journalists. Most political cartoonists have too much integrity to take ideas submitted by readers, and here you are shopping for them. Do you not care about your work? If you don’t want to be a political cartoonist, then get out of the political cartoon business. And then on top of all that, you’re not going to pay the person who writes the cartoon you’re going to sell.”
Daryl previously syndicated an anonymous cartoonist who signed his work as Rivers. Rivers is a lying racist idiot MAGAt in Canada (that was a secret too). By syndicating Rivers, Daryl was telling editors and publishers that political cartoons didn’t have to abide by their ethics policies, thus cartoonists aren’t journalists anymore. That’s a weird position for a cartoonist to take. Even letters to the editor must be signed. When asked to justify this a couple of years ago, Daryl replied to me, “I don’t see a problem with this,” which wasn’t answering the question.
I first met Daryl in 1997 when I was in Hawaii. He flew out and bought me a burrito. I liked him. He’s a nice guy personally, and I thought at the time with his website, that he was a huge advocate for our entire industry, but over the years, he started doing shit like this, shit I can’t remain silent about. Other cartoonists have told me to shut up and not make noise, but you know I’m not good at that. I’m a noisy motherfucker. I rock a Gibson. And then others send me private messages encouraging me on, but won’t add their voices to my one-man protest. Those cartoonists are smarter than I am.
I would rather support other cartoonists than criticize them. I try to make any criticism about the message in it, like if it’s lying or racist, never just because I think it sucks. I don’t want to go after Daryl, but here I am.
Daryl could come after all my clients and try to chase me out of the business, but there’s no sign he’s ever tried that, though I have lost newspapers to his syndicate, which sells dozens of cartoons in one package for a flat fee. It’s hard to compete against that. Once, every cartoonist could submit to USA Today, but then Daryl made a deal with Gannett that shut out every cartoonist from their entire chain except for his cartoonists. Now, Gannett doesn’t publish political cartoons at all.
But he can’t come after my Substack. To all you paid subscribers, this is one of the things you’re helping me fight, and you’re giving me more freedom to speak out. So I thank you again.
I’m going to open the comments today to be fair, to give Daryl a chance to respond to this. I don’t think he will, but I’m trying to be fair.
I’m not going to fight a war or carry a torch for this. I’m going to move on and focus on my work, but somebody had to say something. I’ll end this with one more message to Daryl: Write your own fucking cartoons.
Creative note: I already did one Easter cartoon, which has a higher chance of being published than this one. I wanted to do something like this cartoon just to rouse up the conservatives on Easter Sunday. It’s so much better than the he-has-risen bullshit from the fake Christians like Gary Varvel.
(As a person who mostly does smile, but is occasionally still told to do so, I appreciate this comic. Meanwhile, as to the bagel, see the first comment just now; or HuckleberryHiroshima’s comment.)
Elon Musk got into a little tiffy-tiff with Peter Navarro, and I have to say, I like seeing these guys destroy each other.
You can’t choose a side between Elon and Navarro. You can only hope both lose. It’s like trying to choose a side during the war between Iraq and Iran (the US picked Iraq), or when the Dallas Cowboys play the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, or when the Atlanta Braves plays of the two baseball teams in Florida, or a fight between the insurance emu or Flo from Progressive, or Ice T in Carshield commercials vs gutter filter commercials, or a contest between Nickelback and the Kars4Kids song, or a battle between ketchup on hotdogs and Domino’s Pizza.
Side note: I just Googled to make sure it is Ice T in those stupid Carshield commercials, and just because I’m trying to be accurate and informative to serve you, I’m going to get thousand of Carshield ads in all my shit now. You’re welcome.
If you see two fucknuts in MAGA caps in a slap fight, you don’t choose a side, and for the love of god, you don’t break it up. You should get some popcorn and encourage each fighter. “Kick him in the nuts! Yeah, that’s how you do it. Hey, other guy. Are you going to let him get away with kicking you in the nuts like that?”
In case you don’t remember, Peter Navarro is a lying sack of turds. He was the director of the National Trade Council in the first Trump administration (sic), then director of the Office of Trade and Manufacturing Policy. Now, in Trump 2.0 (sic), he’s senior counselor for Trade and Manufacturing. He’s also the first official from Trump’s White House (sic) to serve time in prison for trying to steal the 2020 election. Now, there are at least two felons in the White House.
This week, Navarro “guaranteed” the Trump tariff war will not bring a recession, just like he guaranteed there wouldn’t be a pandemic from COVID-19. Instead of investing in stocks, I’d rather place wagers on Peter Navarro being wrong about things.
But what’s going on between him and Elon?
Last Saturday, a poster on Twitter/X defended Navarro’s intellect as a voice on trade. This is like when a MAGAt tries to tell us that Trump knows what he’s doing. Navarro is a big part of Trump’s trade policies. Musk replied that Navarro’s Harvard Ph.D. suggested he had more ego than brains and that he “ain’t built shit.”
Musk has criticized Trump’s tariff war, and the two-day stock market crash, before coming back and crashing again, cost Elon at least $18 billion in Tesla stock. It’s kinda difficult to tell someone the tariffs are working when that someone just lost $18 billion because of the tariffs.
Then, Elon addressed an Italian political party (think of Nazis with risotto) by video and said, “Both Europe and the United States should move, ideally, in my view, to a zero-tariff situation, effectively creating a free trade zone between Europe and North America.” That goes against Trump’s stance (for now), whose trade policy is wildly going in the opposite direction.
Navarro, who has been defending Trump’s tariffs, has said Trump’s tariffs will bring in over $600 billion in new annual revenue. That can’t be true at all because Trump is calling on other nations to negotiate, so these tariffs will eventually be reduced, either by negotiations or Trump chickening out because his balls dropped off again. If that is Trump’s intention (not his balls dropping off but reducing the tariffs), then we won’t be getting new revenue every year of $600 billion. But, if we do get $600 billion revenue from these Trump tariffs, it will be from American consumers. Navarro should be capable of understanding this because he has a PhD in economics from Harvard.
Navarro has written a dozen books which most economists call bullshit. Despite Navarro’s PhD from Harvard in economics, he believes a trade war with higher tariffs will allow us to cut more taxes. I don’t have a PhD in economics from Harvard, but I still know that tariffs are taxes on American consumers. Duh.
Navarro and Musk don’t agree on trade. So, after an insult from Elon, Navarro sent one back, saying Elon wasn’t a car manufacturer, just an assembler of parts. Uh oh.
Elon responded to the video (which we don’t need to watch), saying, “Navarro is truly a moron.” He also said Navarro is “dumber than a sack of bricks.”
And then Elon tweeted about 20 more times to defend himself and his shitty cars.
Elon is right about this. Peter Navarro is a moron who is dumber than a sack of bricks, but Elon is a moron, too. Elon is a lying Nazi-supporting moron.
But Elon got the better of this since he told Navarro to consult with economist Ron Vara. Who? Ron Vara is an economist Navarro has quoted in several of his stupid books. The only thing wrong with that is Ron Vara doesn’t exist. It’s an anagram of “Navarro.” Peter Navarro has to quote a fictional economist because he can’t find a real economist who shares his dumbasseconomic beliefs, probably because they’re fucking insane. Navarro is that one guy in the office who’ll advise that today’s lunch should be from Blimpies (I just finished 30 Rock).
Even Elon’s brother, Kimbal, said, “Who would have thought that Trump was actually the most high tax American President in generations?” He also said, “Through his tariff strategy, Trump has implemented a structural, permanent tax on the American consumer.”
This is like Rob Gronkowski knowing FTX cryptocurrency wasn’t real money before Tom Brady lost $30 million in it.
White House spokesgoon Karoline Leavitt was asked about the sparring between Elon and Navarro, and she explained it with, “Boys will be boys, and we will let their public sparring continue.”
Oh, yeah. Leavitt is also a moron.
Maybe Trump is getting all of his trade advice from Gronk.
By the way, this is what inspired this cartoon.
Creative note: I have five ideas in my folder to choose from for the next few days. I felt this would be the best for today. This cartoon was so quick to draw that the files of it that I sent to my clients may be the smallest I’ve ever sent. The files with crowd scenes and lots of Easter eggs are huge.
Music note: I listened to Queens of the Stone Age.
Trump is putting tariffs on places where there are no exports…or humans. Read on Substack
The two major things about tariffs that Donald Trump doesn’t know are that tariffs are taxes and trade wars don’t work.
Trump may finally be starting to understand it’s American consumers who pay for tariffs, as he said in February that we may feel a little “disturbance” from them, and the “ultimate fruits of tariffs will be worth the pain.” In Trumpese, that means there’s going to be a HUGE disturbance (like living next door to a frat house) and pain, similar to a barbed wire catheter.
The people who don’t feel pain from tariffs are rich people, especially billionaire assholes like Trump and Elon Musk. Dickless fucos don’t have to worry about barbed wire catheters.
Trump called yesterday “Liberation Day,” which doesn’t make sense at all when it leads to Americans paying higher prices. By the way, I was in a grocery store last night, and the cheapest dozen of eggs was $5.35, and they got as high as $7 plus.
In yesterday’s announcement, Trump said, “For years, hardworking American citizens who were forced to sit on the sidelines as other nations got rich and powerful, much of it at our expense. But now it’s our turn to prosper and in so doing, use trillions and trillions of dollars to reduce our taxes and pay down our national debt.”
This is bullshit because the United States has the largest Gross Domestic Product (GDP). We have the largest economy in the world (thanks, Joe Biden). Our GDP is $90,000. By comparison with another rich nation, Germany’s is $58,000. This is also how Trump acts at tax time, crying that his buildings aren’t worth the amount he claims on loan applications.
Tariffs don’t reduce our taxes. It’s an additional tax. For the dunderheads who may be reading this, let’s say you increase tariffs on products coming from Heard Island, where only penguins live. Since penguins don’t actually export anything, we’ll have to make something up. Let’s say they export shiny rocks because I think I read somewhere that before a dude penguin can shag a nice lady penguin, he has to give her a shiny rock. So, these penguins are exporting shiny impressive rocks for wooing, and suddenly they have to pay a ten percent export tax to sell in the United States. The importer, NOT the exporting penguins, has to pay this tax. Do you think Walmart eats this ten percent? Of course not. You do, or whoever shops where they sell shiny penguin rocks from Heard Island (and McDonald Island.
Also, you can’t pay off the national debt with tariffs. The tariffs are designed to discourage Americans from purchasing foreign goods. If that works, then nobody’s going to pay those tariffs. The other idea is to force other nations to lower their tariffs, and if that works, then we lower ours again, and nobody’s paying for those high tariffs.
Ya see, kids, if the shiny rocks become too expensive for American consumers, then they stop buying them, and then the penguins will stop exporting them. That’s called supply and demand.
By the way, the shiny-rock trick works with humans, too. The rocks are just more expensive.
I’m not an expert on tariffs (nor shiny rocks), but it seems I understand it a lot better than the President (sic) of the United States. Feel free to correct me in the comments if I’m wrong on any of this.
Trump also said during his announcement, “The United States charges other countries only a 2.4 percent tariff on motorcycles. Meanwhile, Thailand and others are charging much higher prices, like 60 percent. India charges 70 percent, Vietnam charges 75 percent, and others are even higher than that. Likewise, until today, the United States has for decades charged a 2.5 tariff. Think of that 2.5 percent on foreign-made automobiles. The European Union charges us more than 10 percent tariffs.”
All that’s complicated as tariffs from a specific nation aren’t usually a flat rate, but are different per product. First, Trump’s numbers are wrong. Secondly, while we have low tariffs for imported cars, we charge a 25 percent tariff on pickup trucks, which is higher than what Europe charges for imported cars.
Trump ignores that Europe is our largest trading partner, and if they retaliate with “reciprocal” tariffs, then that hurts American manufacturers, and then DOGE won’t be the only one firing American workers.
Trump said, “Toyota sells 1 million foreign-made automobiles into the United States, and General Motors sells almost none. Ford sells very little. None of our companies are allowed to go into other countries.”
More lies. Our cars can go into other countries. China loves large American cars while Japan, which is a smaller nation geographically, does not. It’s not that our cars can’t be sold in Japan, but it’s that Japanese drivers don’t want them. Until two years ago, General Motors sold more cars in China than they did in the United States.
Trump said, “And with countries like Canada, you know, we subsidize a lot of countries and keep them going and keep them in business. In the case of Mexico, it’s $300 billion a year. In the case of Canada, it’s close to $200 billion a year.”
Lies. Our trade deficit with Mexico is NOT $300 billion but instead, it’s $172 billion. With Canada, it’s NOT $200 billion, but instead, $45 billion. These numbers are extremely easy to look up.
Trump said, “Canada, by the way, imposes a 250 to 300 percent tariff on many of our dairy products. They do the first, the first can of milk, they do the first little carton of milk at a very low price. But after that it gets bad, and then it gets up to 275, 300 percent.”
The truth is, this was the case, but it was renegotiated in the North American Free Trade Agreement during Trump’s first term (sic).
Trump also gave a history lesson. “Then in 1913, for reasons unknown to mankind, they established the income tax so that citizens, rather than foreign countries, would start paying the money necessary to run our government. Then, in 1929, it all came to a very abrupt end with the Great Depression, and it would have never happened if they had stayed with the tariff policy; it would have been a much different story.”
Trump sucks at history because the reasons are known. Lower-income people pay tariffs, so an income tax was added with the expectation wealthier Americans would take more of the burden, but as we have learned since 1913, Billionaire assholes aren’t all that ethical. I heard about one billionaire who doesn’t pay his contractors, lawyers, or taxes.
Trump says the Great Depression wouldn’t have hit if America “had stayed with the tariff policy,” yet it’s the tariff policy, the Smoot-Hawley Act, that raised tariffs, started a trade war that decreased world trade by 66 percent, and contributed to the Great Depression and World War II. Herbert Hoover signed Smoot-Hawley into law. The Northwest Progressive Institute ranks Hoover as our 39th best president. It ranks Trump dead last, and he hasn’t even started his depression and World War III yet.
Bragging about tariffs from his first term (sic), Trump said, “If you look at China, I took in hundreds of billions of dollars in my term.”
Lies. He took in $75 billion from China, paid by American consumers, and had to bail out American farmers at the cost of $28 billion to American taxpayers after China retaliated. What you wanna bet those farmers voted for Trump? Yee-haw, fuckers.
Now, what do penguins have to do with any of this?
Heard Island and McDonald Islands are among several “external territories” of Australia that Trump has hit with ten percent tariffs. The World Bank’s data says the United States imported $1.4 million of products from Heard Island and McDonald Island in 2022, nearly all of which were “machinery and electrical” imports.
What makes those numbers suspect is that it’s believed no human has set foot on either island in the past decade. With the islands closer to Antartica than to Perth, it takes a two-week boat ride to get to the islands (they don’t have airports). The life you find on these islands are seals and birds, and the birds are mostly four species of penguins. Those penguins are king, gentoo, macaroni, and eastern rockhopper. I did not know there was a macaroni penguin. That’s the kind of shit that distracts me from finishing a blog because I have to Google “macaroni penguins.” Holy crap, they have huge yellow eyebrows.
The tariffs on two of the most remote islands in the world where no products are exported from, or where humans don’t even visit, proves that the Trump administration hasn’t fully studied tariffs. If they’re placing tariffs on penguins, then how much have they studied the tariffs they’re placing on the French or British? How high are the tariffs on Thighland and Yo-Semite? Shit, don’t steal that for a cartoon, my political-cartooning colleagues!
Also, these tariffs are NOT reciprocal, as Trump claims. It’s not like those penguins were charging us a ten percent tariff to start this trade war.
Penguins are notorious for not paying their debts. If you loan a penguin ten bucks, you will never see that ten bucks again, and he’ll probably waste it all on anchovies. How are we supposed to collect tariff taxes from freeloading flightless birds? All those penguins in zoos are on welfare and don’t pay for food or housing. And I hear the seals aren’t much better. They do more arfing than tariff-paying. The Internal Australian Revenue Service has reported it has never received a payment from penguins, and not even in shiny rocks. Penguins are almost as bad at paying their bills as Donald Trump.
We’ll see penguins fly before we ever see a check.
Creative note: I would have done something on a McDonald’s tariff, Trump’s favorite food, if penguins weren’t a part of the story.
Scottie's Playtime 