TOW #20

In this political cartoon, President Donald Trump is depicted at an Olympic swimming event alongside strong, muscular athletes whereas he is drawn as very fat and is wearing floating helpers to suggest that he cannot swim nor will he do well in the race. A speech bubble drawn above Trump says, “Remember, if I lose, this race is rigged.” (Luckovich). The sketch was produced by Mike Luckovich, a prominent political cartoonist for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution and was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Editorial Cartooning and the Rueben Award for Outstanding Cartoonist of the Year. He makes many anti-Trump and pro-democratic cartoons rich in rhetoric and string reasoning. The image makes a powerful statement about Trump’s claims during the presidential election season about how if he lost to Hillary Clinton, he would say that the election was rigged and influenced by fake votes. In the picture, the Olympics are a symbol for the presidential election and the well-trained swimmers portray the more qualified politicians that were in the running alongside Trump. Luckovich uses the symbolism in the cartoon to show the viewer how Trump is making outrageous claims about the election process and that it should be expected that he loses because he is nowhere near as trained and deserving of the high position. No one would expect the fat, untrained Olympian to win just like people shouldn’t expect the mean candidate with no political experience to win the highest esteemed honor in America. Furthermore, the image suggests that Trump should not make claims about voting interference for the aforementioned reason, and that doing so makes him seem unappreciative and much like a sore loser. The symbolism in the carton were very successful in achieving the purpose of the cartoonists as the message was clearly stated and identifiable by any informed reader.