#7: SS Trump

Toles, Tom. "Rub a dub dub, Republicans in a sinking tub." The Washington Post, 9 December 2018, www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2018/12/09/rub-dub-dub-republicans-sinking-tub/.

When seeking a political cartoon to analyze today, I turned to Tom Toles, a Washington Post cartoonist whose style I particularly enjoy.

Toles, being a cartoonist, draws in a cartoonish manner. His landscapes are often abstract, as we see above; his characters are simple; their features are exaggerated. I've long enjoyed Toles' drawing style—particularly the way in which he depicts President Trump, which I find hilarious. Toles depicts him as a short, perpetually angry man, with beady eyes and bushy, angled eyebrows. The mouth, which resembles a donut, is my favorite part; it finishes off the caricature. The President is one of Toles' most common characters, alongside such personified ideas as the GOP elephant, who appears as a stylized, humanoid elephant in a suit.

Here we see the President and the GOP on a sinking boat labeled "SS TRUMP." The President appears smug and ignorant of his surroundings. He is shown vainly attempting to control the sinking boat using oars, apparently oblivious to his predicament as it inexorably slides into the depths of the sea. Meanwhile, the GOP remarks that "this is the lifeboat," suggesting that there is truly no way out of this situation. The elephant does not appear to be helping in any capacity.

The combination of labels ("SS TRUMP;" "GOP"), the symbolism of the elephant, the "sinking ship" analogy, and the satirical representation of the President himself make Toles' message clear: the administration is collapsing, and both the President and the Republican Party are going down with it. The fact that the President controls the oars suggests that the predicament is his fault specifically, or a combined result of his incompetence and Republican inaction. It is implied that the GOP could have not boarded the boat to begin with, but that now it is too late. Put simply, Toles predicts the imminent downfall of both President and Party.

Finally, Toles often includes a caricature of himself in the bottom right corner of his cartoons. Here, he snidely remarks on the administration's abandonment of American principles. Toles has no sympathy for the occupants of the sinking vessel.

Find more Tom Toles here.

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