Q Toon: Or a Steal at $2.44 Each

The cartoonist who's all about the LGBTQ+ issues wants to draw about the federal debt this week? What gives?

Well, folks, since Trump's Treasury Secretary is openly gay, I'm taking that as an opening to draw about fiscal policy once in a while. I did try to draw about transportation issues during the previous administration occasionally, although Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg was a little more public about his private life than Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent is, so some of those cartoons had nothing to do with policy.

When Donald Commodus Trump named Bessent to his cabinet in 2024, the conventional wisdom was that Bessent would be one of the few adults in the room. Unlike the rest of the cabinet of random MAGA hotheads and docile spineless lickspittles, he was supposedly qualified for his post. In my first cartoon about him, my characters Max and Leo predicted that because of this, he'd be gone in ten months.

It turns out that I, Max, Leo, and conventional wisdom were all wrong.

Scott Bessent has gone from being a George Soros and Democrat backer to full-fledged, pass-me-the-Kool-aid, Trump-ass-kissing drone. And if that's not enough metaphorical imagery for you, it looks like he ain't leaving any time soon. There may be time for him to show up in plenty more cartoons.

When  Trump had the East Wing of the White House demolished, Bessent had the windows on that side of the Treasury Department building covered up so that nobody could get a look at, or photo of, the travesty across the street. When Trump wanted Treasury to add his own signature to U.S. currency, Bessent quickly ordered the engravers to get right on it.

When Trump decided he wanted to have his face on a proposed $250 bill, Treasury officials balked because federal law stipulates that "only the portrait of a deceased individual may appear on United States currency and securities." Bessent, however, told Kaitlan Collins, "I don’t think that there’s anything untoward about having the President of the United States on the 250th anniversary bill." 

Apparently, 31 U.S. Code § 5114, on the books since 1866, hasn't stopped Bessent's Treasury Department from minting a bunch of gold-plated one-dollar coins with Donald Still Alive And Bleating Trump glaring out at the suckers willing to shell out $2.44 to own one.

Because what are you going to do with it? Spend it? It is nominally worth only 41% of what you paid for it (or 65% of the $154 you'd splurge on 100 of them). Assuming that it doesn't become a modern day Confederate Dollar on January 21, 2029.

At least the coin has some gold leaf on the outside — perhaps a bit more than you would be able to strain out of a bottle of Goldschläger. That's more than the folks who fell for Trump Bitcoin will have when the con folds up his game and jets back to Mar-a-Lago in his Qatari Trump Force One.

Obsessive minds might have noticed that the number for how many times 1.54 goes into 40 trillion is strangely repetitive. (Had I not rounded the result off to the nearest whole number, those five digits would have continued on forever.) I suppose I could have used the unit price for a single Trump Commemorative Buck, which would have meant the Treasury needing to sell 16,393,442,622,951 of them.

But that sales figure sounds so much more attainable.

June Toons

Today's Graphical History Tour head down into the Bergetoon vaults in search of cartoons from ten, twenty, thirty, and forty Junes ago. 

2016

June, 2016

I noticed that the Philadelphia Gay News, which usually runs my cartoons in grayscale, chose to print my Barney Frank tribute cartoon in full color in their annual Pride issue currently on newsstands. I did offer a grayscale version of it, which I did not do for the cartoon I drew ten years ago this week in response to the Pulse nightclub massacre.

Rainbows do not translate well into grayscale or black-and-white. For the first 16 years or so when I began drawing for the LGBTQ+ press, I didn't incorporate color except for special projects. At first, whenever I put a rainbow flag in a cartoon, I could only suggest the colors by drawing six shades of cross-hatching. Around 2005, I started employing computer-generated halftones in my work, but it was another seven years before I began regularly colorizing my drawings.

Changing the mood entirely:

2006

for Q Syndicate, June, 2006

Some guys just aren't second date material. And some other guys just don't know how to break it to them.

The non-topical nature of this cartoon suggests to me that although I drew it in June, it may have been sent to Q Syndicate as a reserve for a later date when I might be on vacation or any other reason miss deadline.

So I assume it was published sooner or later, because if it is still languishing in the retired computer back-up files at syndicate offices, I ought to change the Q in the final panel to an N in order to keep it relevant.

1996

June, 1996

Here's a cartoon I drew for the University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee student newspaper, the UWM Post, and drove it up to their office only to discover that they had no plans to publish during summer break.

Previously, the Post put out three issues each summer, publishing biweekly instead of its regular semiweekly schedule.

As for the content of the cartoon: Sen. Bob Dole, having secured the Republican presidential nomination with a record of supporting the party priority of criminalizing abortion, now sought to appeal to supporters of abortion rights. Not by softening his position on reproductive rights, but by welcoming the support of pro-choice Americans willing to have that choice taken away from them.

Standing behind Dole in this cartoon are House Majority Leader Dick Armey, House Speaker Newt Gingrich, Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott, Senators Phil Gramm and Jesse Helms, and theocratic activists Gary Bauer, Pat Robertson, and Ralph Reed.

1986

June, 1986

Speaking of cartoons that never saw print, I have not been able to determine whether or where this cartoon might have been published. It stars my congressman, Les Aspin, after he had voted in favor of President Reagan's military aid package for the right-wing Nicaraguan rebels, the Contras.

Aspin's vote stunned liberals at home and in Washington. Elected on a peacenik platform during the Vietnam War in 1970, his prior experience in the Pentagon garnered him the chairmanship of the House Armed Services Committee in 1985.

I populated this cartoon with a number of actual Democratic politicians: I can be certain of Alan Cranston, Daniel Inouye, Majority Leader Jim Wright, House Speaker Tip O'Neil, 1984 vice presidential candidate Geraldine Ferraro, and future President Joe Biden (which means that I was wrong about when I first drew him according to this Graphical History Stop). Some that I'm less sure of might be Representatives Barbara Mikulski and Dick Gephardt, Party Chair Paul Kirk, and Senator Robert Byrd.

Jumping back to 2016, I'd like to end up with a cartoon that I'm fairly certain got published somewhere.

for Q Syndicate, June, 2016

Republicans' mythical Big Tent popped up in Donald Trump's 2016 presidential campaign, when he claimed to have great support among the LGBT community while simultaneously wooing the antigay evangelical vote that had become so critical to becoming a GOP nominee. Since then, the evangelicals have bowed before the Baal of Trumpism, ceding their dominance to the oligarchs and broligarchs, Nazis and apartheiders.

By the way, I couldn't find the file of the colorized version of the Friends with Benefits cartoon, so I've recolored the original scan. I probably didn't originally paint Trump's face orange like I do now, since I also hadn't drawn tiny hands or the overlong necktie in this cartoon. The pig snout came a bit later.

Now, I don't know what LGBT supporters Trump, the presumptive GOP nominee at this point, had in mind, aside from Ric Grenell, Scott Bessent, Milos Yiannopoulos, and Caitlyn Jenner. But Trump's campaign message after the Pulse Nightclub massacre was that Hillary Clinton would "bring[] in more people who will threaten your freedoms and beliefs" (his tweet). He also told an audience in Atlanta: 

"The LGBT community, the gay community, the lesbian community — they are so much in favor of what I've been saying over the last three or four days. Ask the gays what they think and what they do, in, not only Saudi Arabia, but many of these countries, and then you tell me — who's your friend, Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton?"

This ties in, not just to the cartoon at the top of today's post, but also to the Bob Dole cartoon. I doubt that Dole, or any of the guys drawn behind him, seriously thought that he had fans of the pro-choice persuasion. Inviting them to vote Republican was just one of those things politicians used to do even in the days when we were sorting ourselves into irreconcilable adversaries.

But one does get the impression that Donald Trump lives in a fantasy world where facts become true (or crooked) simply because he says so. He hears the LGBT community, the gay community, the lesbian community agreeing with him in his head, so they must be his bigliest friends, that he can tell you.

Ditto the adulating crowds at Madison Square Garden, the praise for his gilded ballroom, any number of big men who have come up to him with tears in their eyes, and those peace negotiations about to bring Iran's surrender any minute now.

Q Toon: $250 Bill of Sale

A pair of Trump lackeys in the Treasury Department came up with the brilliant scheme to put Donald Trump's face on a new $250 bill, ostensibly to mark the nation's 250th birthday this summer. But really because adding Trump's signature to all our paper money and minting a special gold-plated dollar coin with Trump scowling at whomever had the misfortune to end up with one just wasn't enough.

They hired a British guy to design the portrait for the bill (I might have recommended the New York courtroom sketch artist from Trump's fraud trial, but they didn't ask me), and Trump's ever so servile Treasury Secretary presented the a mock-up of the bill to the nation as if he were announcing a sign from heaven above.

Now, the chances of the Donald Lookitme! Lookitme! Trump $250 bill being approved by the U.S. Congress, given that living persons are not allowed to be on U.S. currency, are thinner than an earthworm's mustache.

No living person has appeared on U.S. currency since 1866, when it was outlawed after the image of a mid-level Treasury bureaucrat showed up on a 5-cent note. Legislation that would allow Trump to appear on a $250 bill was introduced in Congress last year to commemorate the nation’s 250th anniversary but has languished.

There is also the slight problem that federal law mandates what banknote denominations the Treasury Department is authorized to produce, and $250 is not one of them.

Treasury employees who pointed out the obstacles to getting any Trump commemorative $250 bill out in time for the nation's sesquiquincentennial found themselves transferred to janitorial duties at the Adak, Alaska field office.

In any event, there are too many primaried Republican congressmen and senators who no longer have any political reason to suck up to Dear Leader before their forced retirement next January.

Must've Been the Last Straw

Oh, well. I'm sure DJ Trump's Freedom 250 party mix will have the national mall groovin' and swayin'.

Anyway, here's this week's sneak peek:

✍

Q Toon: Tea and Bessentpathy

You have, of course, heard about Donald Joffrey Trump bleating on Trump Social, “Robert Mueller just died. Good, I’m glad he’s dead. He can no longer hurt innocent people!” (Unless you’re a Fox Noise junkie.)

There is no bottom to the depravity of the nasty, brutish, and short-tempered man befouling the Oval Office and the nation. Many have come forward this week to condemn this indefensible shitpost.

So instead, I'm condemning the lickspittles who are defending it.

Meet the Press host Kristen Welker concluded a contentious interview with Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent on March 22 by asking him about Trump spitting on Mueller's grave before the body was even cold:

Kristen Welker: "Do you think it's appropriate for the president of the United States to celebrate the death of an American citizen, someone who's a Bronze Star, Purple Heart recipient and who served in Vietnam?"

Bessent: "Kristen, I was with the president in the green room at Davos and there was a video playing of the — what may have been an illegal raid on his home at Mar-a-Lago. They are going through his wife’s wardrobe. And I watched the look in his eye, and I think that neither one of us can understand what has been done to the president and to his family."

Welker: "But to the question of the president’s post, I mean, Robert Mueller didn’t order that raid. Is it appropriate for the president to celebrate the death of any American citizen –"

Bessent: "Again —"

Welker: "– Mr. Secretary –"

Bessent: "I think that given what has been done to President Trump and his family it is impossible for either of us to understand what he has been through."

Welker: "So, you don’t think that there’s anything wrong with the post, saying, 'Good. Robert Mueller’s dead.'”

Bessent: "Again, I think that we should all have a little empathy for what has been done to him and his family."

Welker: "All right. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, thank you as always for being here."

Think about that one for a second. Retired FBI Director Robert Mueller was appointed in 2017 to conduct the investigation into candidate Trump's collusion with Russia, and published a report in 2019 that was immediately mischaracterized by then Attorney General William Barr as exonerating his boss. Mueller had nothing to do with the 2022 FBI raid on Mar-a-Lago when Trump was refusing to return presidential papers illegally stored there.

By the way, kudos to whoever it was at the 2026 Davos seminar whose brilliant idea it was to have video of the Mar-a-Lago raid playing on the television in the green room while Trump was in it. Well played! Maybe next year you can put together a montage of courtroom sketches from his 2024 fraud trial.

So anyway, Mr. Secretary Bessent behooves us to muster up some empathy — which I thought was one of those woke mind viruses Republicans want to stamp out — for the most amoral, ill-mannered, foul-minded, self-absorbed, overgrown brat ever to escape the clutches of the law and the Peter Principle to ascend to the Presidency of our late Republic.

Personally, I hope that Donald Commodus Trump lives long enough to see the next occupant of the White House demolish his precious ballroom; and if a giant sinkhole swallows up Mar-a-Lago at the same time, that would be bonus. But I have wondered many times over the past couple of years what we editorial cartoonists will draw (if there are any of us left) when he at long last faces the Grim Reaper like nobody has ever seen before.

Now I know.

Q Toon: Moving Right Along

With our self-styled Secretary of War ordering war crimes in the Caribbean, and the President of the United States falling asleep at a meeting called for the express purpose of finding out how deep his cabinet of ass-kissers can give him tongue, it may seem a mere distraction to focus on the Secretary of the Treasury dismissing complaints about inflation by suggesting that people in "blue" states should just move to "red" ones.

But my bailiwick is the LGBTQ+ press, and Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent is gay. That was my excuse for paying so much attention to the previous Secretary of Transportation, and I'm sticking to it. If the next president's Secretary of Energy is a lesbian, I'll probably have to come up with a bunch of cartoons about her, too.

Meanwhile, Mr. Bessent's advice ain't gonna do ya a heckofalotta good if you already live in a red state. And if you're a New Yorker who's fond of Ethiopian-Peruvian fusion cuisine, the most au courant Broadway extravaganzas, or having an international airport within Uber distance, you might want to reconsider relocating to Shelby, Montana.

And you might want to check out what the pay grade for your line of work is out there, too.

By the way, if inflation is making life difficult for you, I really wouldn't recommend moving to Argentina.

Q Toon: Bessent Assurance

Saying that Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent is one of the more qualified members of Donald Joffrey Trump's cabinet is akin to saying that Doc is one of the taller of the Seven Dwarfs.

Nevertheless, while Trump may not give a shit about health, education, welfare, the rule of law, international relations, veterans, labor, agriculture, the environment, transportation, national parks, democracy, or anybody not named Donald Trump Sr., he does like to have a monetary system that keeps him in the style to which he come accustomed.

So he put a billionaire hedge fund manager and major campaign donor in charge of the nation's finances. Trump was even willing to overlook that Bessent is openly gay, and used to work for George Soros. (Don't think for a moment that fails to rankle the MAGA rank and file.) He even used to give large sums to Democratic campaigns.

Bessent has the unenviable job of trying to soothe his buddies on Wall Street. This week, there was a momentary interruption in the stock market slide after his prediction that Trump's tariff war with China might not go on forever. Wall Street also appreciated him prevailing upon Trump yesterday to back off his demands that Fed Chair Jerome Powell resign — but as soon as the markets closed, Trump went right back to calling Powell derogatory names, so a lot of good that did.

Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words can spook the Nasdac.

A couple Sundays ago, Bessent told Kristin Welker on Meet the Press: "Americans who want to retire right now, the Americans who put away for years in their savings accounts, I think they don’t look at the day-to-day fluctuations." And he's right, insofar as someone who wanted to retire right now might decide to put it off until their savings account recovers.

Assuming that they have a choice in the matter. Over-67-year-olds aren't eagerly sought after by the Gen Y-ers and millennials now in charge of most hiring and firing decisions. (Hiring? Good luck getting your 50-years-of-experience résumé getting through indeed.com to be seen by any human being.)

When it comes to LGBTQ+ issues, Bessent has not had much to say in his present position. One can, however, go back ten years ago, when he told the Yale alumni magazine , 

“In a certain geographic region at a certain economic level, being gay is not an issue. What’s fantastic is now, people in the rest of America, whether blue collar or white collar, have access to everything. If you had told me in 1984 when we graduated and people were dying of AIDS that 30 years later I’d be legally married and we would have two children via surrogacy, I wouldn’t have believed you.”

There is much about the present moment in history that you wouldn't have believed in 1984.

But as for the immediate future, there may be a fan base for former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, but I don't see anyone, not even the Log Cabin Republicans, clamoring for Scott Bessent to take a shot at the Top Job.

He might not even outlast Pete Hegseth at his current job.

This Week's Sneak Peek

If any of my fellow editorial cartoonists were not taking Easter Sunday off, how many of them do you suppose would have put out cartoons for this morning about Pope Francis schooling Vice President Shady Vance on "the true ordo amoris"?

I was at my drawing board late into the night, but that wasn't what my cartoon was about.

I decided against scanning the reverse of a $10 bill into the background of my cartoon. Otherwise, my cartoon might have looked like this.

Q Toon: Trump's DEI Hire

The odd couple of Liberal Leo and MAGA Max return to discuss a Trump cabinet nominee nobody else is drawing cartoons about.

Drawing for the LGBTQ+ press, I feel obliged to highlight President Re-Elect Donald Trump's naming of an out gay man to his cabinet. Scott Bessent stands out from Trump's other appointments not so much because of his sexual orientation, but more because in contrast to the rest of them, he's so normal.

Yes, he's a billionaire, not Mr. John Q. Public. But he's no worm-brain-addled RFK Jr., or Russian asset Tulsi Gabbard, or pardoned blackmailer Charles Kushner, or sexual harasser Pete Hegseth, or snake oil huckster Doc Oz, or fascist weasel Steven Miller. Nor did he shoot his own dog, as Secretary-designate for Homeland Security Kristi Noem did. Or come to Trump's attention via World Wrestling Entertainment, like his choice to head the Department of Education, Linda "But We Asked Our Pederasts to Please Stop" McMahon.

As important as the post of Secretary of the Treasury is — being fifth in the line of presidential succession and all — you might not hear much about him during his time in office, unless he joy rides in an Air Force jet as Trump's last Treasury Secretary was wont to do. (Quick: without looking at the money in your wallet, who has been Treasury Secretary during the Biden years?)

Do I really think that Scott Bessent is a diversity hire? Not really. His financial support of Trump and the MAGA movement would have a lot more to do with his appointment. Trump may want to burn Justice, Defense, Interior, Education, Health and Welfare, and Veterans Affairs to the ground, but he has a vested interest in keeping his Secret Service detail paid so they can afford his hotel room rates. (Didja know that the Secret Service is part of the Treasury Department?*)

To be honest, I suspect that if Bessent leaves the Even More Corrupt Trump Administration early, it will not be because he was the token gay hire. 

But when the Trump tariffs and draconian Muskaswami budget cuts push us into a new recession and eggs are still $4/dozen, somebody is going to have to be the scapegoat, and it's going to be the person who doesn't quite fit in with the rest of the Cabinet of Misfit Toys.

_____________

*Correction: The Secret Service was transferred from the Treasury Department to the newly formed Department of Homeland Security in 2003. The "U.S. Secret Service Mission Improvement and Realignment Act of 2020" would have returned it to the Treasury Department but died in Congress without coming to a vote.