But what about the fee that his company collects per interview?

“If you think $5 is money; I don’t,” he said, laughing. (For context: According to Mr. Adams, he was once paid $100,000 to speak for an hour on techniques for success.)

For anyone who has peeked at Mr. Adams’s Twitter feed in the last few years, however, none of this should come as a big surprise. There are the typical tweets promoting his widely syndicated comic strip, which he has been creating for more than 30 years. But there are also plenty of hints of his other identity: online provocateur. Long before his “set your price” tweet ignited controversy, there was the podcast episode in which he defended family separations at the southern border and his “men’s rights” blog post.

He is an admirer of President Trump, and he admits to borrowing some of the president’s style. “One of the things that you can learn from Trump’s approach is that energy is more important than being technically correct,” he said on Tuesday.

In a live Periscope video, he connected the recent backlash to his support of the president. “The pushback I’m getting is fueled by the intense hatred of Trump and of anybody who’s ever said anything good about Trump,” he said in one widely circulated remark.

Still, how did a Bay Area-based artist, known for creating a widely syndicated comic strip about the indignities of office life, get to this point? We put some questions to Mr. Adams.

Has he always been a Republican?

No. In fact, the last presidential candidate he voted for was former Vice President Al Gore, he said. Since then, he said, he has stopped participating in elections.

“I publicly don’t vote because it causes bias,” he said, adding that “I define myself as left of Bernie.”