Eight of the nation’s top cartoonists show us how they lampoon the president.

Being president is a tough job. The president has to sign bills, conduct wars, and uphold a heap of dusty rituals and customs. One of these traditions, perhaps the least dignified of all, is to be the focus of the ink-stained wretches of the cartooning trade.

Since the earliest days of the republic, these artists have taken a president’s face, really his whole public image, and put it through a wringer of ridicule, contorting distinctive features and twisting them into a cartoon caricature. For Barack Obama and George W. Bush, it was their oversized ears; for Bill Clinton, his bulbous red nose. That image becomes the inky avatar that can not only define a presidency, but follow a leader right into the history books.


But it also takes time for cartoonists to develop their perfect caricature of the commander in chief, boiling down physical attributes to shapes and lines that form a readily recognizable icon. One cartoonist will yank out the ears or tug on a lower lip; another might go nuts with the jowls or hair. With Donald Trump, a president whose yellow mop, pouty lips and signature hand gestures make him a particularly inspiring muse, a satirist can choose to go in myriad directions.

So, nearly one year into the Trump administration, we checked in with some of the best political cartoonists in the nation to see how they’re drawing Trump, the caricature. In the videos below, they offer their thoughts on the challenge as they sketch the face that launched a thousand pens.

Pat Bagley