I did not take this cartoon lightly. In fact, I wasn’t even considering it when I thought of it or when I roughed it out. But I decided to draw a rough of it and bounce it off a few people I respect.

The first friend said go for it. She saw that I wasn’t the one being racist but instead, was calling Donald Trump out for his racism. She’s smart but also crazy, like me, so I can’t entirely trust her on this. But I knew that if it scared her, then I shouldn’t draw it. It didn’t scare her.

Then I showed it to a fellow cartoonist who is very bold himself. He’s not afraid of much. He said I was taking it to another level with the exaggerations, but it was defendable because Trump was the one who brought in the racist stereotypes.

Then, I showed it to one of my two proofreaders. Proofer number one said it churned her stomach. When she saw the finished cartoon, she said it bothered her even more.

Proofer two said, “Oh god! Excellent.”

Then I showed it to my best friend. He is not on social media and I can’t even text him a photo of the cartoon because he still uses a flip phone. So I called him and asked if he was home. He was and I told him to check his email, which is on Comcast. I set up the cartoon first because I didn’t want to throw something racist at him in case he would see the cartoon that way. But he’s one of the smartest people I know, liberal, and knows where I’m coming from. He’s also black. What’d he think?

He liked it. We went over every panel and he said all of it was fine with him…except for the KFC thing. He said that might be the only problem but that he also knew that I was going to do what I do and good luck with it. He also wasn’t familiar with Trump’s love for KFC.

So I may have ignored good advice. I know MAGAts are going to call me a racist but I don’t care about their criticism. I know the folks who hang out at places like Daily Kos who are so liberal that they don’t have a sense of humor will call me a racist. Remember when I drew George Santos as a hula dancer? They called that racist.

I’m more worried about the rational people. first off, if they’re rational, they won’t call me a racist but they will express concern. And I’ll listen to them. The thing is, everyone who objects to this cartoon could be right.

After what Donald Trump did last Friday, I wanted to hit him for his racism and hit him hard. I wanted to take him on to the point that I’d risk being misunderstood.

Trump spoke to a Black conservative group last Friday and they gave him an award they had just invented. Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson called Trump’s “con-man hustle” for the African American vote “cringeworthy, cynical, infuriating, insulting, racist, and super-racist.”

Donald Trump compared his arrests for 91 criminal indictments to historic discrimination against Black Americans.

Trump said, “A lot of people said that’s why the Black people liked me because they had been hurt so badly and discriminated against. And they actually viewed me as I’m being discriminated against.”

Trump, a white billionaire who poops in gold toilets, claiming his arrests is discrimination is almost as bad as when Republicans use Martin Luther King quotes for their racist agenda.

Trump also said, “The Black people are on my side now because they see what’s happening to me happens to them.” I can’t think of any Black people who are being charged for trying to steal the election and classified documents. Trump’s civil fraud case is about favorable loans, which most Black people would never be considered for.

Trump got eight percent of the Black vote in 2016, 12 percent in 2020, and is currently polling at 16 percent with Black voters. You can’t make a case that the “Black people are on your side” when your support is only 16 percent.

Trump claimed, “I am being indicted for you, the Black population.” That’s a lot of bullshit. He knowingly and intentionally broke the law to stay in power for his own selfish reasons, not for Black America.

Trump claimed Black Americans are drawn to him because of his Fulton County mugshot. He said, “The mug shot, we’ve all seen the mug shot, and you know who embraced it more than anybody else? The Black population. It’s incredible. You see Black people walking around with my mug shot, you know, they do shirts.” I have not seen this. Maybe all the Blacks for Trump guys I saw at each of the four arrests I traveled to will get those shirts because the ones they were wearing when I saw them are from 2020.

Trump has a long history of racism which includes his real estate company being sued by the Justice Department in 1973 for discrimination against Black renters. In 1989, he purchased full-page ads in four New York newspapers urging the state to “bring back the death penalty” for the Central Park Five, a group of Black and Latino men convicted and then exonerated for a brutal rape. Trump never apologized for the ad.

Trump was the champion of birtherism, the racist lie that President Obama was not qualified to be president because he was born in Kenya when he was actually born in Hawaii, a US state.

Trump defended the Tiki Torch Nazis who marched in Charlottesville chanting “Jews will not replace us” and “Blood and Soil.” Even after the Nazis murdered anti-racism activist Heather Heyer, Trump said there were “some very fine people on both sides.” Fine people don’t march with Nazis.

Trump referred to Central American, Caribbean, and African nations as “shithole countries” sending us “the people they don’t want” while asking why we couldn’t get more people from places like Norway.

Trump said, “Send them back” about The Squad, a group of four non-white members of the House, three of whom were born in this nation and one who immigrated and became a US citizen.

Trump once asked a Black reporter if she could set up a meeting between him and the Congressional Black Caucus, not understanding that isn’t something journalists do and that not every Black person knows every other Black person. Trump is so racist, he can’t hide it.

Even the agenda of building a wall is racist as it won’t even slow down illegal immigration. A wall across our border will only be an expensive monument to Donald Trump’s racism.

Donald Trump and the entire Republican Party worked to make voting more difficult for Black Americans after he lost the 2020 election. He lied about voter fraud in Black voting precincts. This is a man who’s invited racists to lunch at Mar-a-Lago. He once said he didn’t know about David Duke to avoid criticizing him.

Donald Trump put racist Steve Bannon and Stephen Miller in his administration.

Donald Trump doesn’t represent or fight for Black America. Trump is the president (sic) of white racists. The reason Trump is so popular in the GOP is because of his racism. Hate crimes increased after Donald Trump announced his candidacy in 2015. Memberships in hate groups have only grown since the Trump era began. He is their champion.

Visit Clay Jones’ website and email him at [email protected].