Donnie Jerko

I’d planned on my first cartoon of the year including a gag that compared Donald Trump to Chucky, the serial killer doll from the Child’s Play movie franchise. It ultimately didn’t come together, but between that idea (which I still hope to use in something, eventually), this one here, and a gag I did on Halloween with Trump as Jason Voorhees from Friday the 13th, it looks like my thing for the new President’s going to be casting him as various murderers from ’80s horror films!

The above image, of course, is based on one of the most iconic scenes in all of horror cinema: Jack Nicholson as Jack Torrence in The Shining, yelling “Here’s JOHNNY!” moments after busting through a door with an axe. The famous line was improvised by Nicholson, and the director, Stanley Kubrick, had apparently been living in England for so long that he was unfamiliar with its meaning, and almost didn’t use it.

Since The Shining came out in 1980, I figure the odds are pretty good that someone did this exact same joke for Reagan’s inauguration in ’81, with him yelling “Here’s RONNIE!” instead. He and Trump are remarkably similar in quite a few ways, and indeed were both cultural icons of the ’80s, but the most important similarity is probably them both being (or having been, in Reagan’s case) horrible, selfish, evil old bastards; and Trump has such potential as a lumbering disaster that he’s well-poised to challenge the ol’ Gipper as Possibly the Worst President in American History.

This cartoon doesn’t have quite the subtlety and depth I prefer to include in my work, but in addition to the comparison just noted, there are a few major scenes and plot elements in (the film version of) The Shining that make good metaphors for some of the biggest issues with Trump. I refrain from explaining them here, because I don’t want to spoil the movie for anyone who hasn’t seen it.

Regardless, if ever there was a good time to be extremely blunt, now is that time. Ugh.