On July 8, 2018
© By John Arkelian
Vladimir Putin has ruled Russia since 1999, brazenly circumventing
“Donald Trump’s Axis of Evil” editorial cartoon © 2018 by Michael de Adder.
term limits by serving variously as prime minister and as president – and making sure that key executive powers moved with him to whichever office of convenience he occupied at the moment. In March 2018’s presidential election, to no one’s surprise, Putin won yet another six years at the helm, purportedly winning 76% of the vote in an election that was denounced by the West as fraudulent and rigged. (For one thing, Putin’s chief opponent, Alexei Navalny, was barred from even running.) But the highly suspect nature of Putin’s victory didn’t stop Donald Trump from congratulating him. Trump’s words rankled in the ears of every defender of democracy, as Senator John McCain so rightly pointed out: “An American president does not lead the Free World by congratulating dictators on winning sham elections…. President Trump insulted every Russian citizen who was denied the right to vote in a free and fair election”
McCain was right on point again in June 2018, when he objected to Trump’s boorishness toward his country’s longtime allies: “The President has inexplicably shown our adversaries the deference and esteem that should be reserved for our closest allies. Those nations that share our values and have sacrificed alongside us for decades are being treated with contempt. This is the antithesis of so-called ‘principled realism’ and a sure path to diminishing America’s leadership in the world.” Astonishingly, that critique of Trump’s perverse behavior came before Trump upped the atrocious behavior ante by launching an insulting tirade against his Canadian hosts in the aftermath of the G-7 summit in June 2018 and going on to embrace the murderous tyrant of North Korea as a trusted new friend.
Copyright © 2018 by John Arkelian
Editorial cartoon © 2018 by Michael de Adder
Michael de Adder’s editorial cartoon “Donald Trump’s Axis of Evil” was originally published in “The Hill Times,” a newspaper concerned with the people and politics of Parliament Hill. It is reproduced in Artsforum Magazine with the kind permission of the artist. See more of his work at: http://deadder.net/
Editor’s Note: Canada has been America’s closest friend and steadfast ally for more than a century. But, judging by Trump’s imposition of high tariffs to impede the import of steel and aluminum from Canada (and other close allies), on the puzzling grounds of “national security,” and his flurry of tweeted insults in the aftermath of the G-7 Summit (on June 8-9, 2018 in Charlevoix, Quebec), Canada has suddenly been ranked among the dangerous and the reviled. Canada’s chief ‘weapon’ in rattling Trump, its protectionist dairy quotas, is illustrated here by Prime Minster Justin Trudeau, who is sheepishly brandishing a glass of milk – incongruously alongside a couple of real menaces on the world scene. JA