Post-summit cartoons satirize Trump as 'Putin's poodle'
July 19, 2018
Donald Trump has been under bipartisan fire for failing to publicly confront Vladimir Putin over alleged election interference.
With global media like the Daily Mirror labeling Trump "Putin's poodle," and former CIA director John Brennan calling him "nothing short of treasonous," there was broad agreement that the president had caved in to Putin during this first summit meeting.
Cartoonists worldwide were of course having a field day.
Read more: Donald Trump supporters shrug off Putin summit scandal
Manipulation galore
This cartoonist actually dug up a caricature on the Trump-Putin show from two years ago that still works fine in 2018:
The New Zealand Herald newspaper shows athletes triumphantly holding up their trophies at events over the past few days: the World Soccer Cup, the Wimbledon tennis championships – and then, in his own category entirely, Putin holds up a grinning Trump doll, his hair shining as yellow as the golden trophies.
Another cartoon uses different imagery to convey the same message of who has the upper hand in the Trump-Putin relationship.
Disturbing similarities
On the latest cover of Time magazine, the two leaders' faces are merged into an eerily striking single face. Visual artist Nancy Burson said she hoped her image would make readers reflect on the similarities between the two men.
New York's Daily News also has a Trump cover this week with a cartoon showing the unpredictable, vainglorious president holding hands, not with his wife Melania, but with Putin, and included a clever play on words:
Read more: Opinion: Trump-Putin summit was a troubling media circus
Mixed messages
In his first public comments about Monday's summit, the Russian president told his own diplomats that US-Russian relations are "in some ways worse than during the Cold War," but that his meeting allowed them to start on "the path to positive change."
The US President, meanwhile, tweaked his controversial comments at the press conference, saying he'd misspoken when he said he saw no reason why Russia would have interfered in the 2016 election — despite mounting evidence to the contrary. He now says he accepts his own intelligence agencies' conclusion of Russian meddling, but added: "It could be other people also. A lot of people out there."