I think there are periods in this country when behavior is abhorrent: McCarthy, Watergate, Bill Clinton. It's just a question of how the checks and balances in the American system work and how leaders stand up to it or don't stand up to it.
CNN wants me to tell the news in a way that seems genuine and authentic. They don't want me to be Ron Burgundy.
'MAD Magazine' put out a book that was a collection of Trump cartoons, and they asked me to do the forward because they knew that I was a fan because I'd done stories and tweeted about 'MAD.' So I did the forward and asked them if I could do a cartoon. They let me, and I did caricatures of myself and Wolf Blitzer.
I did freelance cartooning off and on from college graduation in 1991 through ABC News hiring me in 2003. I did a weekly comic strip for 'Roll Call' for about nine years. I sold cartoons and caricatures to 'The Los Angeles Times' and 'The Washington Post.' I drew as much as I could. It's really tough to make a living doing it.
Trump is most fun to draw - just a great mash of caricature-able features, from bouffant to eyebrows and scowl, to the high cheekbones and the regal pride.
Nastiness and mockery and meanness sometimes seem as if they're spreading like a contagion.
We've gone through many different permutations of coffee-making, from grinding our own beans to the regular drip to an iced coffee maker.
It is empirically indecent to make fun of the disabled... That's just indecent.
It's not empirically wrong to say that Washington isn't working for the American people and Washington does too many things for powerful special interests and it's broken.
My kids are good artists, and they do a pretty good version of Dad in their caricatures.
Don't get me wrong: politicians have been lying for a long time, long before Donald Trump was born, but the degree of just nonstop rage, grievance, prevarication, I haven't seen, probably because we haven't had a direct line from a politician's id to the public before.
There's a long tradition in this country of questioning generals.
McCarthyism and Trumpism are very different. They stand for very different things, but the technique of the big lie, smearing and telling lies, you know, McCarthy was doing that. At the time, the media, Democrats, and Republicans were all paralyzed - not all, but most of them were paralyzed. They didn't know how to deal with this.
My journalistic heroes are Peter Jennings and Ted Koppel and Tim Russert and Edward R. Murrow, among others, because they were tough.
My mom is a nurse; my dad is a pediatrician. They were born in the 1940s, and they were both inspired to fight against injustice, whether it was the injustices of the Vietnam War or Watergate or children in poverty or oppression of African Americans in Philadelphia where I was growing up.
The only politician in my family was my grandfather's grandfather, who was the mayor of Winnipeg from Jan. 1, 1917, until Jan. 5, 1917, because he lost the recount. So he was mayor of Winnipeg for four days.
As a fan and collector of 'MAD' magazines as a kid, I am well aware that my art is unworthy. I remain in absolute awe of 'MAD' artist Mort Drucker and loved Wally Wood and Harvey Kurtzman and Al Jaffee and Don Martin and Angelo Torres and Peter Kuper and Sergio Aragones.
Mean is easy. Mean is lazy. Mean is self-satisfied and slothful.
I tried to do a comic strip. I came close, and I met with Universal Press Syndicate in Kansas City, but ultimately, they did not go with my strip.
Normally, at a debate or a town hall, I would be quick to say to someone, 'That was rude,' or, 'We're going to try to keep it civil here,' or, 'Let's not have personal attacks.'
