Taking on Trump

Cartoonist/author Garry Trudeau has been on the front line of incisive political commentary since his Doonesbury strip made its debut in 1970. In the intervening years, he's taken on hot-button issues like abortion rights and lampooned mighty figures like Reagans, Bushes - and Donald Trump.

By 1987, Trudeau, already lambasting Trump, was telling audiences Trump would run for president some day. In 1989, Trump said this: "Doonesbury is one of the most overrated strips out there, mediocre at best."

The Republican nominee for president is the subject of Trudeau's new collection, Yuge!: 30 Years of Doonesbury on Trump. Trudeau, 68, appeared at the Rittenhouse Square Barnes & Noble on Monday - the first day of the Democratic National Convention. He spoke to the Inquirer the day before his arrival.

The timing of your reading - happy accident or on purpose?

On purpose. I usually go to some part of conventions and tack on the book signing.

So, you are watching TV Thursday night as Trump's acceptance speech builds to a crescendo. What are you thinking?

I'm thinking that this is happening on my birthday. I possess what my wife [Jane Pauley] calls "room-temperature" fame, so I'm still on those celebrity birthday lists that appear in local papers. I had been receiving congratulatory emails about my advancing years all day, but the final indignity - the terrible thing I'd lived long enough to see - was that acceptance speech. I didn't listen to all of it, but I heard enough to learn it was midnight in America, and we were all about to be killed in our beds. I have to say, it put my birthday in perspective.

Did you also realize at that point that "this book of mine is going to sell gangbusters"?

No, I was mostly relieved that it had a chance to sell at all. Back in March, when we pulled the trigger on publication, it was by no means certain that Trump would win the nomination. If he'd lost, the book, which came out two weeks ago, would have been DOA.

Since the RNC, have you created anything having to do with Trump?

I have ideas for Trump strips lined up like boxcars, but I have to be careful not to neglect all the other characters. It's similar to what happened to [Doonesbury] during the gulf war, when all my story arcs kept looping back to that larger narrative. All of us in the media have the same problem with Trump. It's like having a big, clanking cowbell inside your head: You can't focus on anything else.

Of all the people you have, or could have, lampooned, why Trump? What is it about him? What is different from, say, Ronald Reagan?

Trump is the only person I've ever seen in public life who could step directly into a comic strip, no questions asked. From the improbable hair to the freestyle locutions to the inane self-regard, Trump is the most natural toon talent since Daffy Duck. I didn't have to change a thing.

Where were you in your life when he got to you?

Well, I had to live in the same city, and like a lot of New Yorkers, I couldn't understand what we'd done to deserve him. He'd built nothing of distinction - just a couple of glass-and-brass eyesores - and yet he was in our faces every day. And he wasn't going away. So I adapted and added him to the cast.

Where do you start drawing with Trump, physically? There has to be a beginning. What is it?

Well, it's a little technical, so bear with me. In profile, I begin with his left ear, just to center the head. Then I draw a single hair originating from the temple, bend it, and head west until I reach the edge of the golden overhang, then reverse directions and make for the collar, curling it up at the end. I calculate the strands from the temple hairline to be over a foot long. That's why the hat is always nearby. One unprotected downpour could do Trump more damage than a dozen Ted Cruzes. Sorry to put that image in your head.

What is your favorite element of his speech?

Well, I'm hardly the first person to note this, but virtually everything he says is a lie. It's uncanny. Even the most banal details are exaggerated or made up. It doesn't matter whether anything's at stake or not. A CNN crew member once told me that when he was setting up a camera in Trump's office, he overheard him tell his daughter that CNN had five cameras in his office. Five. There was one.

I read in "Yuge!" that he seemingly likes you less and less. Have you ever run into him?

I've spotted him in the wild a few times, but we've never met. After the New Hampshire debate in February, he came out into the press room, and I couldn't take my eyes off the back of his head. It looked like a sheet of gossamer had been lacquered into place with some sort of gold slurry. It was amazing, like nothing found in nature. The camera really doesn't do it justice.

Could there have been another Republican choice?

Sure. Most of the GOP field was actually quite respectable, at least from a mental-health perspective. Carson was the only other fantasist. And Cruz isn't crazy, just evil.

What will you do if he wins? And what of the electorate who elected him?

I'll just keep doing my thing - at least until Trump loosens the libel laws. As to his supporters, I'm not so sure they're actually blind to Trump's many flaws. They just don't care. They want a president who will "shake things up." And being careful what they wish for isn't how they roll.