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: A Gentleman in Moscow

Gay Republican operative Richard Grenell is reportedly interested in snagging a prominent foreign policy position in the Absolutely Corrupt Trump Regime™, including the post of U.S. Ambassador to Russia, vacant since last June.

"He had an interest in the job – or at least he floated the idea to select colleagues," one anonymous source close to Grenell told the Daily Mail of London, while acknowledging that "Putin's regime is extremely anti–LGBTQ."

Thirty years ago, Republicans' objections to President Clinton's nomination of James Hormel to be U.S. Ambassador to Luxembourg included the claim that the fact of Hormel being openly gay would be an insult to Catholic Luxembourgers. If the citizens or government of Luxembourg were truly upset, however, I don't remember hearing anything about it, and I'm certain that the U.S. Senators who raised such a stink about Hormel's nomination would have been sure to point out any complaints.

Two decades later, during the First, Almost As Corrupt Trump Administration, Ric Grenell raised his hosts' hackles as U.S. Ambassador to Germany; but it was because he insisted on meddling in domestic German politics. It had nothing to do with his sexual orientation. 

Trump's State Department is apparently in no hurry whatsoever to put anybody in charge of our embassy in Russia. Trump crony Michael Witkoff and presidential son-in-law Jared Kushner have been Trump's de facto conduit to the Kremlin (when he isn't getting his instructions directly from Putin), operating without the nuisance of having to get confirmed by the Senate. The two are likely to play a more important role in U.S.-Russian relations than whoever eventually becomes the next official ambassador, anyway.

As for the former Acting Director of the Donald J. Trump John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts, Mr. Grenell just wants to get any foreign service appointment at all. He appeared most recently in my cartoons in March, when he was reportedly angling for a position with Kristi Noem's "Shield of the Americas."

By the way, if anyone has heard from Kristi Noem's "Shield of the Americas," please contact the Bureau of Missing Persons.

text?

This Week's Sneak Peek

What, another Ric Grenell cartoon? Oh, well — Scott Bessent will have to wait for some other time.

So I was mindful of being inclusive when creating the host in this week's cartoon. She's completely made up, by the way; any resemblance to persons living or dead is purely coincidental.

I suppose I could have drawn Eugene Daniels or Jonathan Capehart, but there is no way that Grenell would be caught dead on MS NOW.

Q Toon: Ric Rolls with the Punches

Since I had introduced Max's mother Karen during my vacation as someone working at the Donald J. Trump John Fitzgerald Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts (hereinafter referred to as the DJTJFKMC4PA), who better to interact with newly former President of the DJTJFKMC4PA, Ric Grenell?

Gay Republican Grenell has a track record of stirring up opposition wherever he goes. Republican Theocrats were up in arms when presidential candidate Mitt Romney took him on as a foreign policy surrogate; he later repeatedly offended his hosts as Ambassador to Germany in Donald Trump's First Corrupt Presidency.

With the recrudescence of Trump, Grenell came on board to oversee the bastardization of the JFK Center, sending artists and audiences streaming toward the exits. He and a new board of Trump lickspittles and right-wing ideologues rubber stamped Trump’s impetuous response to shut the DJTJFKMC4PA down for so-called renovations for the next two years.

Now, we don't know whether Grenell quit or was fired. Nor do we know what his plans for the future are; New York Times reporter Elizabeth Williamson attempted to ask him that quite reasonable question, only for him to throw a hissy fit back at her, huffing that she is a "left wing hack” manipulating the news.

Not the response of someone who left of her own accord, girl!

I drew my cartoon before Williamson and Grenell’s exchange became public. I suppose I would have had to draw a completely different cartoon otherwise, but Karen is not a New York Times reporter or a left wing hack. I wrote her as a rock-solid Republican. Whether she's a lickspittle or an ideologue — well, you'll have to wait and see.

At any rate, to have Grenell snap at Karen would require him to be even more of an unhinged sissy than I think he is.

But what do I know? I'm just a left-wing hack interested in attacking Republicans and manipulating the news for my own far left agenda.

Q Toon: Exit Stage Left

Here's Part Two of Mama's visit to Max and Leo's humble abode.

I've made an effort to by coy about where Max and Leo live — in what city, town, or village (someplace with a couples therapist and a coffee shop, however), what part of the country, and whether in a house or apartment. Hence the introduction of Max's mother, who, it can now be revealed is on or works for the board of directors for the so-called Donald J. Trump John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts.

It can also be revealed that I was away on vacation when the deadlines for last week's and this week's cartoons arrived, so these two cartoons were drawn well ahead of time. In fact, they were drawn before the Washington D.C. Opera withdrew from the DJTJFKMC4PA last month. (The Center's President Ric Grenell claims they were fired; perhaps the company wanted to present Emmett Till: the Opera by Clare Coss and Mary D. Watkins. Or had commissioned an opera about Jeffrey Epstein.)

So anyway, I've spent the last few weeks hoping that none of the real entertainers mentioned in this cartoon kick the bucket, or get arrested by ICE for protesting in Minneapolis, or denounce the renaming of the DJTJFKMC4PA. 

But then our pouty mercurial president went and brayed on Trump Social that now he is shutting the DJTJFKMC4PA down for two years in order to redesign it into the gilded Louis XIV whorehouse he’s always dreamed of.

The center’s staff learned of the imminent closure through Trump’s Truth Social post, which proposed “temporarily” closing the “Trump Kennedy Center” for “Construction, Revitalization, and Complete Rebuilding” starting July 4. Trump added the move is subject to approval by the center’s board, which he chairs. — https://wapo.st/3NRd901

Phuoc that gagh damask whole.

Q Toon: Culture Cancels Back

Who says there's never any news between the holidays?

Chuck Redd is a jazz vibraphonist and drummer who has presented the Christmas Eve "Jazz Jams" at the John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts every year since 2006. This year, he abruptly canceled his performance after Donald Joffrey Trump's handpicked board of directors voted to deface the building by bolting his name above President Kennedy's. 

“When I saw the name change on the Kennedy Center website and then hours later on the building, I chose to cancel our concert,” Redd told The Associated Press.

If you were hoping to ring in the new year with the jazz stylings of The Coolers, they, too, canceled tonight's program. Redd and the Coolers are by no means alone in disassociating themselves from the Trumpified JFK Center. 

Trump, in one of the first acts of his second term as President of the United States, fired the JFK Center's existing Board of Directors, naming a new board who elected Trump its Chairman. In response, producers of Hamilton canceled its 2026 run at the Kennedy Center; actor/producer Issa Rae and J. Geils Band lead singer Peter Wolf and folk singer Kristy Lee called off their scheduled appearances, as has Doug Varone's Dance Company; and folk musician Rhiannon Giddens moved her concert to a different D.C. venue, The Anthem. 

The Brooklyn-based Puerto Rican band Balún canceled their concert there last February, explaining, "Recent events made it clear that the space no longer aligns with our values. Our safety, integrity, and commitment to justice come first." The Washington National Opera were also mulling leaving the DJTJFK Center due to a 43%  drop in ticket sales since the Trumpsters' hostile takeover, although they have since denied thinking about it

The Center's Trumpist president, Ric Grenell, has announced that the DJTJFK board plans to sue Redd for breach of contract, sending Mr. Redd an angry letter on "Donald J. Trump & John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts" letterhead.

My guess is that Mr. Redd's lawyers might argue that he is not in breach of contract because anything calling itself "The Donald J. Trump & John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts Board of Directors" has no authority to act on behalf of the John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts. The Center's birthname was explicitly mandated by congressional act at its creation, and another act of Congress would be required to change it.

Given Mr. Trump's history of stiffing contractors and performers at the long since bankrupt casino bearing his name, I wouldn't count on paychecks from the transfigured DJTJFK Center being worth the paper they would be printed on. No doubt, the ether through which any bitcoin from them wafts is worth even less.

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By the way, per U.S. Code § 76j,

(b)Restriction on additional memorials

(1)Except as provided in paragraph (2) of this subsection, the Board shall assure that after December 2, 1983, no additional memorials or plaques in the nature of memorials shall be designated or installed in the public areas of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.

(2)Paragraph (1) of this subsection shall not apply to—

(A)any plaque acknowledging a gift from a foreign country;

(B)any plaque on a theater chair or a theater box acknowledging the gift of such chair or box; and

(C)any inscription on the marble walls in the north or south galleries, the Hall of States, or the Hall of Nations acknowledging a major contribution;

which plaque or inscription is permitted under policies of the Board in effect on December 2, 1983.

Q Toon: The Center for Deforming Arts

Unsatisfied with crowning himself Emperor of the United States and Canada, Donald Joffrey Trump last month executed a hostile takeover of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.

Trump seized control of the Center's board, firing its chair and several members of its board of trustees and its president. In their place, he named himself chairman, and Ric Grenell, who was Ambassador to Germany, Special Envoy to Kosovo and Serbia, and White House liason to the LGB-minus-T community in Trump's first term, the Kennedy Center's president. Attorney General Pam Bondi, musician Lee Greenwood and Trump Chief of Staff Susie Wiles are among the new board members.

Trump, who boycotted all four Kennedy Center Honors award ceremonies during his first term, ostensibly launched his Kennedy Center Coup because a drag performance with the Gay Men's Chorus of Washington D.C. had been scheduled May 21 and 22. Promptly canceling the show, the Philistine in Chief screamposted on Trump Social:

"The Kennedy Center is an American Jewel, and must reflect the brightest STARS on its stage from all across our Nation .... For the Kennedy Center, THE BEST IS YET TO COME!"

Trump's idea of the brightest STARS from all across our Nation? Why, the J6 Insurrectionist Felons Glee Club, of course. And possibly another 39-minute concert from Trump's campaign rally iPod playlist.

In response, several other members of the Center's board quit in protest, including actress-producer Issa Rae and TV producer Shonda Rhimes, and as artistic advisor, musician Ben Folds. Mystery novelist Louise Penny, the cast of "Finn," and and the Alfred Street Baptist Church Christmas Show were among artists announcing that they would cancel their scheduled appearances.

JFK Center ticket sales for remaining shows have plummeted by half. 

It will be interesting to see how the JFK Center's Mark Twain Prize for American Humor ceremony for Conan O'Brien (host of Sunday's Academy Awards) comes off less than a month from today. Given that Trump and his sugar daddy Elon Musk consider themselves hilariously witty, this may be the last Mark Twain award ceremony worth watching for at least four years.

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I had some difficulty drawing the bust of Kennedy in this week's cartoon. Trying to depict the rough surface of the bronze casting in pen and ink utterly obscured the facial features. Attempting to portray the bust's texture in Photoshop, first in grayscale and then in color (I provide both versions separately), took hours. 

Later that day, well after I had sent my cartoon to Q Syndicate, I read a column by Jack Ohman about the death of Clint Hill, the last survivor of John and Jacqueline Kennedy's Secret Service detail that fatal day in Dallas. Jack's column includes a graphic description of President Kennedy's assassination, and it occurred to me that my drawing of that bronze bust lying on the floor might be upsetting to readers for reasons I had not intended.

I am not quite old enough to have my own memories of JFK, and most of my editors are even younger. It will be up to them to decide whether or not to print my cartoon, and I will respect their decisions either way.

Readers are likewise free to complain. That's what free speech is all about. 

I only ask that they do not call for a boycotts, firings, and banning my or anyone else's cartoons from syndication. (Or here on Blogger.) That is what cancel culture is all about.

Q Toon: Lgbt And Found

While the Senate is busy deciding whether anyone gets to hold a president accountable for inciting a riot in a desperate attempt to overturn an election, I have chosen instead to wrap up another story thread from the previous administration.

Back in 2017, when that previous administration abruptly erased the White House's LGBT web page, I created the character of a guy in charge of the office of that administration's LGBt Liaison.

Drawing his cramped closet-cum-office was easy in four-panel format; a later single-panel episode presented me with the challenge of filling the space with all sorts of props: chemical buckets, a hand-cart, a roll of insulation, and so on and so forth. Separated from the boiler room only by a beaded curtain, the nameless liaison had by then taken to working in his underwear, and even the janitor was surprised to find he hadn't left.

As the then Ambassador to Germany adopted the role of the administration's LGBt Liaison as one of his many side jobs, Basement Dude quietly disappeared from my cartoons. Which was unfortunate. Surely he could have helped explain that administration's sustained assault on transgender Americans. Or its various antigay judicial appointments. Or opening loopholes in LGBTQ non-discrimination policies you could drive a church bus through.

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Politico editorial cartoonist Matt Wuerker hosted an on-line discussion about how to draw Joe Biden, titled "For Cartoonists, It's All About the Smile." In a Facebook thread, I noted that it was the same with Jimmy Carter — until he got into office, everything got serious, and we all had to learn how to draw him not smiling.

As you can see, I've ducked the issue of how to draw Joe Biden not smiling. For now.

Let It Only Be Four Years

Last week, I rehashed a bunch of my cartoons about the first two years of the Corrupt Trump Administration, so here are some from 2019 and 2020.

February, 2019

The nature of this here blog is to emphasize LGBTQ issues, so I ought to start today's post by acknowledging the one positive move the Corrupt Trump Administration has made in that regard. Log Cabineer Ric Grenell successfully pushed Trump to call for an end to persecution of LGBTQ citizens by other countries. That might seem out of character for Mr. Trump, until you realize that the policy comes at no real cost to him personally.

March, 2019

Former FBI Director Mueller's investigation into Trump campaign collusion with Russian meddling wrapped up early last year with Mueller's report laying out the evidence but refusing to state any conclusions. Lickspittle Attorney General William Barr released a disingenuously bowdlerized summary of the Mueller report that gave the false impression that the investigation had exonerated his boss.

October, 2019

By the time the full Mueller report came to light, American media had bought the Corrupt Trump Administration's spin.

September, 2019

For four years, Trump Inc. has been hard at work grifting off the presidency: finagling business deals with China for daughter Ivanka, charging the Secret Service to protect Mr. Trump at his own properties, and happily leaning back while foreign governments and corporate lobbyists curry favor with the Corrupt Trump Administration by checking into Trump Inc. hotels to do so. Add in the moolah Junior and Eric raked in from their supposed charities, and you get a clear picture of the Trump family's moral compass.
 

I can't even let little Tiffany Trump slide here: her omission of the "T" at an LGBTQ event recently is seen as a sign that she has inherited her father's animus toward transgender persons.

August, 2019

His animus is not limited to the military. Mr. Trump and his lackeys want to drive them out of the military, out of a job, and out of housing, out of sight, out of mind, and out of existence.

December, 2019

The Supreme Court ruled against Mr. Barr in the employment case above, but that is likely to become a short-lived victory. Senate Republicans refused to consider one Supreme Court nomination and 110 lower court nominations during Barack Obama's presidency so that they could pack the courts with doctrinaire, activists right-wingers during Mr. Trump's. Trump has thus been privileged to add three such Justices to the three put on the Supreme Court by the Bushes.

In case you have somehow not made up your mind about how to vote this year, I will point out one more time that Justice Stephen Breyer is 82 years old.

January, 2020

The House of Representatives impeached Trump over his efforts to pressure Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to meddle in U.S. presidential politics. Mr. Zelenskyy ignored Trump's request to "do us a favor, though," and Senate Republicans ignored the House.

March, 2020

As coronavirus swept the world this year, Trump began holding daily press briefings, breaking an absence from the press room that had lasted over a year. He boasted of the high viewership ratings these press briefings were getting – better than Monday Night Football!

April, 2020

Not that you could rely on anything coming out of Mr. Trump's mouth in this crisis being any more truthful than anything he had said before. 

Or since.

Unfortunately, by limiting these two Saturday posts to my own cartoons, I've given short shrift to some really important issues: he has put kids in cages, found "very fine people" among racist mobs, treated women and minorities with contempt, attacked the media for fair reporting, and both behaved and governed like an overgrown spoiled brat.

It's time to send him to his room without any supper.

Q Toon: Trump's Gay Outreach Around

Gay Republican operative Ric Grenell, lately on this blog for having come up with the Corrupt Trump Administration's tepid advocacy for international decriminalization of homosexuality, has quit his job as Jack McFarland of All Trades at the State Department to take on the unenviable role of LGBTQ+ Outreach for the Trump reelection campaign.

Ironically, with a straight face.

"As America's first openly-gay cabinet member, I can confidently say that President Trump has done more for gay and lesbian Americans than any other president, and it is not even close," Grenell said in a statement to Fox News.

Grenell went on to slam Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden, saying that during his "four decades in Washington, he consistently fought against marriage equality and even threatened to cut funding for schools who taught acceptance of homosexuality."

"From President Trump's global campaign to decriminalize homosexuality to becoming the first president to support gay marriage on his first day in office, he has been a champion for our community and I am thrilled to be part of the fight to re-elect him for four more years," Grenell said.

One has to wonder who is going to continue Mr. Grinell's campaign to decriminalize homosexuality around the world now that he's no longer Ambassador to Germany, Special Envoy to Kosovo and Serbia, and Acting Director of National Intelligence. Mike Pompeo? Ha! 

There hasn't been much to show for Grinell's efforts: Chechnya continues its pogrom against LGBTQ+ Chechens; and Russia, Poland, most of the Islamic world, and most of Africa haven't lessened the persecution of their LGBTQ+ citizens, either.

Perhaps his campaign could maybe just possibly have been a factor in swaying the High Court of Botswana to his point of view last year; but I imagine the justices were more influenced by the example of the country's neighbor South Africa, which decriminalized homosexuality back in 1998.

But don't plan your wedding in Gaborone just yet. Thanks to COVID-19, Americans are barred from entering Botswana (as are non-citizens arriving from Austria, Belgium, China, Denmark, France, Germany, India, Iran, Italy, Japan, South Korea, Netherlands, Norway, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom).

Ah, well. At least Mr. Grinell made no pretense that the Corrupt Trump Administration has been anything other than overtly hostile to the T, Q, and + elements of our community. But if it's fair game to "slam" Joe Biden for having opposed marriage equality while in the Senate, it's also fair to note that Biden came to support marriage equality while Trump was still opposing it on the grounds that ... uh, something to do with long putters in golf.

One also has to wonder how Mr. Grinell explains the Corrupt Trump Administration's actions to remove sexual orientation and gender identity protections under Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act; to ban trans girls and women from participating in sports; to deny healthcare protections to transgender Americans; to roll back protections for trans students; to ban transgender people from the military; to strip children of bi-national same-sex couples of American citizenship; etc., etc., etc.

Q Toon: Ric's Place

You may never have heard of Richard Grenell, but he has shown up in my cartoons a few times by virtue of his being gay. Religious Right-wingers pressured Mitt Romney to drop him as a foreign policy adviser during Romney's 2012 presidential run. More recently, he has been behind the Trump administration's lip service to LGBTQ issues, at least as far as asking foreign countries to be less homophobic is concerned.

Trump named Grenell as his Ambassador to Germany in September, 2017; he took office the following April. He promptly irked his German hosts by adopting Trump's propensity for Twitter and decidedly undiplomatic language, tweeting in his first day at work a demand for German companies to stop doing business with Iran.

He has weighed in on domestic politics in Germany and elsewhere, praising xenophobic ultra-right-wingers such as Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurtz and Germany's Alternative für Deutschland Party, and criticizing moderates and liberals including German President Angela Merkel.

On February 10, Trump named Grenell as Acting Director of National Intelligence, replacing Acting Director of National Intelligence Joseph Maguire, who fell afoul of the Corrupt Trump Administration when a subordinate briefed the House Intelligence Committee on Russia's efforts to get Trump reelected. As an "Acting" Director, Grenell bypasses the need for Senate confirmation; he can continue in office until March 11, or, if a permanent Director is nominated before then, until that person takes over.

The Corrupt Trump Administration is riddled with "Acting" officials. Mick Mulvaney has been "Acting" Chief of Staff since January 2, 2019. The Department of Homeland Security has been led by a series of "Acting" Secretaries since April of last year.

Trump has had an acting head of the Small Business Administration for 277 days, which is about one-quarter of his presidency. He’s had one in charge of the Environmental Protection Agency for 234 days, or about 20 percent. The Defense Department has been run by an acting head for 203 days, and the directorate of national intelligence is now at 188 days and counting. Four other Cabinet jobs — attorney general, interior secretary, Veterans Affairs secretary and Health and Human Services secretary — have all had at least 99 days of acting control.

It took seven months for the Senate to confirm Grenell as Ambassador to Germany. Since Trump believes, and the Republican Senate has acquiesced, "I have the right to do whatever I want," don't expect anything to deter Trump from keeping Grenell on as aDNI until the day finally arrives that we become a constitutional republic again.

I only hope I live to see it.

Q Toon: About that U.N. Speech

Since I just got back home from a two-week vacation last weekend, I've got some catching up to do.

I don't know what the coverage of Donald Trump's speech at the United Nations on September 24 was like here in the states; in the reports I saw in Spain, whatever he said was overshadowed by Greta Thunberg's glare as he walked past her in the foyer.

I got the impression from European media that the topic du jour was climate change, but Trump (or his speech writers) never got the memo. Instead, he rattled on about what a great leader he is. Then he slipped in the sentence in panel one of this week's cartoon.

This idea of convincing antigay regimes around the world to stop persecuting their LGBTQ+ citizens has been credited to Trump's Ambassador to Germany, Ric Grenell. That Trump has taken up the cause while advocating against LGBTQ+ rights before our Supreme Court has baffled many observers.

Since the United Nations hadn't packed the room with knuckle-dragging maniacs from Trump campaign rallies, the audience failed to hoot and holler agreement with Mr. Stable Genius's great and unmatched wisdom. If he had had a more receptive audience, I have no doubt that Trump would have veered off his off-topic speech and let his id run wild and perhaps revealed that the true motivation behind his gay rights initiative had nothing whatsoever to do with concern for oppressed LGBTQ+ folks around the world.

QToon: Romney's Gay Ex-Spokesman

You might have missed the resignation of Mitt Romney foreign policy spokesman Ric Grenell last week. Grenell, who had served at the U.N. under John Bolton as the Bush administration's Director of Communications and Public Diplomacy, was named as the Romney campaign's foreign policy spokesman at the end of April. His appointment was greeted with howls of protest from the Religiositous Right because he is openly gay; his partner of nine years is Matthew Lashey, a media and entertainment company executive.

The American Family Association's Bryan Fischer attacked Romney for associating with a "sex-obsessed homosexual." Gary Bauer and Tony Perkins chimed in as well, and Matthew Franck mused in the National Review that Grenell's commitment to same-sex marriage would trump his loyalty to the Republican party: “Suppose Barack Obama comes out — as Grenell wishes he would — in favor of same-sex marriage in his acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention. How fast and how publicly will Richard Grenell decamp from Romney to Obama?”

With the Romney campaign cowering in the corner, and telling Grenell to keep quiet, Grenell withdrew on May 1.

Mention has been made in the press of dozens of misogynistic tweets Grenell had made, and quickly scrubbed after the Romney campaign had named him spokesman, but it is generally agreed that they played no role in his resignation. I can only assume they would only have forced his resignation if he were a Democrat.