Before watching the new animated series Our Cartoon President, I thought I’d come down with a serious case of Trump Satire Fatigue, or TSF. Everywhere we turn the president is getting roasted, deservedly so, by someone new: the late-night hosts, Saturday Night Live, American Horror Story, Michael Moore. At a certain point the race to save democracy via comedy becomes its own feedback loop, an indistinguishable glob of gags extracted from a man so lacking in subtext that the outrageous things he says are earnestly defended, by his handlers a day later, as jokes. Such is the profuse, and prosperous, state of political satire in 2018.

Created by Stephen Colbert alongside Chris Licht, Matt Lapin, animator Tim Luecke, and RJ Fried, Our Cartoon President is actually a fantastic parody, a natural off-shoot of the Colbert brand that’s based on a recurring segment from The Late Show. And it works mainly because it’s not trying to be trenchant, cautionary or even vaguely political. There’s an absurdity coursing through the teleplay and the animation that feels proximal to the political climate but not unnervingly so, and the show capitalizes on the administration’s haplessness but doesn’t necessarily comment on it. The result is something like both The Simpsons and The West Wing, served with a dollop of Vanderpump Rules.

The show also owes some of its success to the personalities making up president Trump’s cabinet and inner-circle, none of which are your run-of-the-mill politicos but instead billionaires, brain surgeons, former lieutenants and ideologues.

There’s Jeff Sessions, Theodore Bilbo’s spiritual heir, who’s been imagined here as a diminutive, drunk grandpa. Goldman Sachs-er Steven Mnuchin suggests putting small pox on pennies and is lovingly referred to as “Nuch Dog” by cartoon Potus. Ben Carson, brilliantly voiced by Zach Cherry, looks vaguely somnambulant all the time, and Stephen Miller takes the shape of a devilish, uppity golem. Generals Kelly, Mattis, and McMaster, each animated precisely by Luecke, act as wily lion-tamers.

The man they must tame is, of course, Trump, brought to life here by Jeff Bergman, a 30-year voice-acting veteran whose caricature of the president is more Manhattan-influenced than those of Alec Baldwin and Anthony Atamanuik. The first episode opens on Donald, in bed next to Melania, enjoying his “executive time”. He channel surfs before landing on the Fox & Friends trio of Steve Doocy, Ainsley Earhardt and Brian Kilmeade, whose sycophancy is one of the show’s best running gags. “It’s 6am, Mr President. Rise and shine, and I love you,” cartoon Kilmeade breathlessly shouts through Trump’s television set. Later, when he gives a Trump speech a nine out of 10, Potus panics: “My God, I’ve lost Kilmeade.”

In the premiere, Trump finds out his approval ratings are dismal and decides the only way to shore up support is by using “weapons of war” or delivering a State of the Union speech. He requests punchlines from his cabinet members, a speech from Miller (who turns one in called “Blood Horizon”), and even meets with Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi, who ask only that he includes the word “progress,” in literally any context, in his address. Schumer spits out the words “Katz’s Deli” and “Hudson River” to curry favor, and Trump asks who’s running their party and compares it to “a bunch of seagulls fighting over a potato chip”. IRL Trump would be hard-pressed to come up with a line like that, but the show lets you laugh with him from time to time.

When it comes time to deliver the SOTU address, an announcer wonders whether Trump will “embrace Washington or take a 40-minute call with Carl Icahn”. I won’t spoil how it turns out, except that Trump triumphantly declares he’s “won the State of the Union”, to say nothing of how the speech is actually received or how it played out in real life last week.



The machinations parodied herein will remind most people tuned into our knee-jerk news cycle of Michael Wolff’s scorched-earth Trump exposé Fire and Fury, published last month. Many of the book’s allegations, from Trump’s affinity for Big Macs to his ignorance of the constitution, are unsubstantiated, which doesn’t make them implausible. But since Fire and Fury purports to be nonfiction, it’s hard to enjoy the book without litigating its truthfulness, and much of it doesn’t pass muster.

Our Cartoon President, on the other hand, is a similar tale of palace intrigue and ineptitude, but one that can be consumed absent an analysis of reportorial rigor. What it is, essentially, is a character study and workplace comedy that plays the narcissism and perfidy of the 45th president for laughs. Since it’s not confined to Trump’s brain trust – Rachel Maddow, Mitch McConnell, and Ted Cruz get the cartoon treatment – it avoids becoming tiresome, too.

Those worried about normalizing or sanitizing the administration might find the show’s focus on personality over policy misguided. But Our Cartoon President, by not attempting to keep pace with the news cycle, provides a playful, surreal alternative to Colbert’s own late-night show and those of Trevor Noah, Samantha Bee and Seth Meyers.