Garry Trudeau on Lampooning Trump and Other Lessons from 5 Decades of Doonesbury

For five decades, Garry Trudeau has been writing what is one of the most important—and entertaining—comic strips in American history: Doonesbury. He started the strip in October, 1970 as a student at Yale. With its sharp-witted look at American politics and American life, it quickly became a phenomenon, eventually appearing in over 1,000 newspapers. He’s lampooned every president of the last half-century and has introduced us to scores of original and engaging characters. After the first Gulf War in 1991, he became a fierce advocate for wounded vets. In 2014, he ceased the daily strip. But his Sunday cartoons keeps on coming. With Doonesbury, Trudeau has been an American Dostoyevsky, producing a never-ending novel now stretching over 50 years. Trudeau became the first comic-strip artist to win a Pulitzer Prize.

On this bonus Summer episode, Mother Jones Washington D.C. bureau chief David Corn talks to Trudeau about how the pain and pride of veterans, his new commemorative collective of strips, and the art of drawing former President Donald Trump, “a right out-of-the-box cartoon character.”