[00:00:00] Daryl Cagle: Hi, I'm Daryl Cagle, and this is the Caglecast, where we're all about political cartoons, and today our topic is Fox News, and we have four brilliant cartoonists joining me today to talk about Fox News. [00:00:15] Daryl Cagle: Gentlemen, it's great to see you all. [00:00:18] Pat Bagley: good [00:00:18] Daryl Cagle: to be here. So, Pat. Bagley is the brilliant cartoonist for the Salt Lake Tribune in Utah since 1979. [00:00:26] Daryl Cagle: And Pat has won a ton of awards, including the Herblock Award, and he's also a shining star in our profession. And Pat, this is one of yours. [00:00:33] Pat Bagley: Yes, it definitely is one of mine. [00:00:35] Daryl Cagle: Well, I thought this was great. He's puffing on the right wing media glue. [00:00:40] Pat Bagley: Oh yeah, and the thing is, you know, you, do this kind of thing, it just rots your brain. And if you are on Fox News, or Sinclair News, or Limbaugh, or InfoWars, or any kind of stuff, it just is brain rot. That was the idea of the cartoon. [00:00:51] Daryl Cagle: Well, also, Fox News is kind of a, soap opera cesspool of, Sexual harassment and crazy big egos and lies and lawsuits and, just huge, crazy, nasty stories. [00:01:02] Matt Wuerker: There's something in that glue, [00:01:04] Dave Whamond: I noticed they're, they're toning things down a bit now after their, voting machine lawsuits. they're correcting things on the air. Now they're. [00:01:10] Daryl Cagle: Really, it seems to be like they're just as crazy and terrible as ever. [00:01:14] Dave Whamond: Well, I've seen a couple, like, we actually, I don't actually have Fox, but I've seen clips where they're actually coming on and saying, Oh, actually, that President Trump, did not win the election. You know, they'll have to correct, uh, a guest or something. Yeah. [00:01:25] Matt Wuerker: Wait, wait, they don't. [00:01:26] Daryl Cagle: They're more arrogant than ever, particularly that new guy, Jesse Waters. [00:01:29] Daryl Cagle: Oh, Waters. By Skin [00:01:30] Daryl Cagle: Crawl. [00:01:30] Matt Wuerker: But Dave, they don't allow FOX north of the border. [00:01:33] Dave Whamond: Well, you know what, I don't know if that's true anymore. At one point we couldn't get FOX, but now it's not part of the regular cable package. And I have quite a few channels and it's not on there. So I think You can get it if you want to. Oh, interesting. Yeah. So once we get it up here, then we'll be shifting fully over to insanity too, I'm sure. I [00:01:51] Daryl Cagle: thought this was a great one. You got this supply chain starting with Fox News going to the emergency room and straight to the mortuary. What did you have in mind on this one? So [00:01:59] Pat Bagley: this was in 21 after the COVID epidemic had been running for over a year. Then you start to get this vaccine skepticism. [00:02:06] Pat Bagley: You know, saying that it's probably a deep state conspiracy and 5G, microchips, it's just crazy stuff. So Fox News is suggesting to their viewers that maybe they shouldn't be getting vaccines. [00:02:19] Pat Bagley: So that leads to people not getting vaccinated. Leading to getting sick, leading to dying, and COVID is still with us, it's still out there. The last time I looked at the statistics, red states, red counties are dying at twice the rate [00:02:30] Pat Bagley: everybody else, because they've accepted this anti vaccine, [00:02:34] Pat Bagley: And he's got a measles outbreak in [00:02:37] Daryl Cagle: Florida, which is absolutely crazy. You put a lot of the blame for that on Fox. Oh, [00:02:41] Daryl Cagle: yeah. [00:02:43] Steve Breen: And let me interject really quick. I could, can we go [00:02:45] Steve Breen: back, Daryl? [00:02:45] Steve Breen: it's no small task to get a building, a hospital and a mortuary all within one frame in one cartoon. And, uh, and, and, and. Wuerker Matt Matt does that well too with oh, yeah with buildings. [00:03:00] Matt Wuerker: Thank you. Thank you very much. [00:03:01] Daryl Cagle: Thought this one was great fun Pat you've got Rupert Murdoch the vulture feeding his babies with All of his news vomit. [00:03:10] Daryl Cagle: I think that's fun. Although I see now that it was in Spanish But an excellent [00:03:14] Daryl Cagle: cartoon [00:03:15] Pat Bagley: Oh, it's Spanish. It is Spanish. [00:03:17] Steve Breen: Why is it in Spanish? [00:03:19] Daryl Cagle: Well, we do Spanish cartoons, and I grabbed the wrong cartoon. But it's excellent in Spanish. [00:03:23] Pat Bagley: I mean, it's, it's, it's clear what it's saying. Yeah. Rupert Murdoch is the brains behind Fox News, News Corp, and The Sun [00:03:32] Pat Bagley: British tabloid. [00:03:33] Pat Bagley: And it's bombing up all this nonsense to [00:03:36] Pat Bagley: vote, [00:03:36] Matt Wuerker: what's it say, Votante State Trump, Votante State Trump, Votante State Del Brexit, [00:03:41] Matt Wuerker: Oh Brexit [00:03:42] Daryl Cagle: voters. Yeah. This is one of those, what the French call cliches that the, the cartoonists love to do is the bird vomiting into the mouths of their babies. I did one too, which was, uh, Trump, uh, Tweety Trump vomiting into Fox News. [00:03:56] Dave Whamond: That's a full on exorcist vomit there, so. [00:03:59] Matt Wuerker: That is really disgusting. [00:04:02] Matt Wuerker: It's not cute cartoon vomit, it's not cute cartoon vomit, [00:04:06] Matt Wuerker: it's [00:04:06] Pat Bagley: Yeah. So the thing about Rupert Murdoch is that any country where he's got a foothold in, [00:04:11] Pat Bagley: their politics goes absolutely crazy and nuts. Rupert Murdoch has a presence in Australia, they have a presence in Britain, he had a presence in the United States. [00:04:20] Pat Bagley: Not in Canada, right? [00:04:21] Pat Bagley: Yeah. Okay, but in all those countries, right wing craziness destroyed the politics. [00:04:26] Matt Wuerker: I think though, that Rupert deserves a pass on all that because he was the guy that first hired Pat Oliphant, apparently. Oh, [00:04:33] Dave Whamond: so he gave us, uh, Pat Oliphant in one hand and then Donald Trump in the other, so. Yeah. And [00:04:38] Matt Wuerker: don't, don't forget the Simpsons. You know, this is something on Matt Groening's conscience. I don't know how he feels about being a cornerstone of the Murdoch empire, [00:04:47] Pat Bagley: but that's true. [00:04:49] Pat Bagley: Okay, let's go. Let's go. [00:04:51] Daryl Cagle: So Steve Breen is a two time Pulitzer Prize winner for the nonprofit news website. iNews source and he drew for the San Diego Union Tribune for 22 years and he writes and draws Children's books great to have you here Steve. [00:05:05] Steve Breen: Oh, thank you Well, this is Tucker Carlson, obviously and he [00:05:09] Daryl Cagle: got that exclusive on the video from the capital and he edited it to make it look like these are nice patriots on [00:05:16] Daryl Cagle: vacation [00:05:16] Steve Breen: Yeah, I think, I think I was just pressed for time this day and I just, grabbed the photo and went from there. [00:05:22] Daryl Cagle: we actually did a whole podcast on, Tucker Carlson. He's such a rich [00:05:26] Daryl Cagle: subject. [00:05:26] Steve Breen: Well, you're right. And anytime anyone just deals in craziness and absolutes, there's such a great target. [00:05:32] Steve Breen: it was just ludicrous what he was saying about the, January 6th. maniacs at the Capitol. [00:05:36] Steve Breen: So, [00:05:36] Steve Breen: this one wrote [00:05:37] Steve Breen: itself. [00:05:37] Daryl Cagle: Also, the way that he was fired shows that they really don't have very much equity in their, their big ego positions at Fox. Any of them get canned at any minute. [00:05:46] Steve Breen: Yeah. it was a stunning fall from grace though. I mean, he was their golden boy. And then the next minute, like a week later, he was gone. [00:05:52] Pat Bagley: Yeah. Did any of you think that had to do with the billion dollar lawsuit that they lost? Is that one of the conditions? [00:05:58] Daryl Cagle: I think it was that his emails That got out, as part of the lawsuit that made him look, duplicitous That he was, turned into a liability in that week. Yeah. [00:06:07] Daryl Cagle: Yeah. Yeah. Money talks. [00:06:09] Daryl Cagle: Here's another one from you, Steve. You've got Rupert Murdoch. He says pets are expensive and he was as bad as the fox. Of course, the fox is on his leash. [00:06:16] Steve Breen: yeah, I guess if you look at his empire, [00:06:18] Steve Breen: the fox. Has brought the most damage or some of the most damage. [00:06:22] Steve Breen: yeah, Rupert is great to draw with all that extra skin hanging everywhere. [00:06:26] Daryl Cagle: well, let's move on to Dave Whamond. Dave Whamond is an incredibly prolific cartoonist. He draws two comics, Reality Check and Day by Dave, and Dave is also a prolific illustrator. [00:06:35] Daryl Cagle: He does puzzles, greeting cards, and lots of top selling children's books. Great to have you here, Dave. Thanks for having me. [00:06:40] Daryl Cagle: So tell us about the Fox News dumpster next to the toilet. [00:06:44] Dave Whamond: I think this is right around the time when CNN hired Chris Licht and he was trying to make the transition to, uh, a move to the right. [00:06:52] Dave Whamond: And, he kind of did it in a fast way, right at the start, fired a bunch of. The usual hosts and they were saying some things that their viewers weren't weren't liking very much So I thought hey, they're trying to top Fox News. Hold my beer jump [00:07:04] Dave Whamond: That's [00:07:05] Daryl Cagle: fun and here you've got Rupert in the Dumpster firing for [00:07:10] Dave Whamond: Tucker My dumpster humor. You see a pattern here. [00:07:14] Steve Breen: Yeah. [00:07:15] Dave Whamond: Yeah. I like, Tucker. He's always got that perpetual confused. Uh, like you're trying to explain Russian algebra to a five year old or something. He's going to get that, that look all the time deer in the headlights thing. [00:07:27] Dave Whamond: So he's fun to draw. And of course, Rupert, as you said, with [00:07:29] Dave Whamond: The wrinkles and sagging skin, he's perfect too, so lots of fun to draw. [00:07:33] Dave Whamond: That's fun. [00:07:33] Daryl Cagle: So, Matt Worker is a Pulitzer Prize and Herblock Prize winning cartoonist for Politico, where he also edits a great weekly roundup of editorial cartoons, and he's the president of the Cartoonist Rights Network International that does a wonderful job of offering support to cartoonists around the world who are in danger because of the cartoons they drew. [00:07:53] Daryl Cagle: Great to have you [00:07:54] Daryl Cagle: here, Matt. [00:07:54] Matt Wuerker: Thanks, [00:07:55] Matt Wuerker: Daryl. [00:07:55] Daryl Cagle: So, tell us about this one. This is [00:07:57] Daryl Cagle: fun. [00:07:58] Matt Wuerker: this is fairly straightforward, you know, we had to go with the brainwash metaphor and Foxitis, cranium cleansing Foxitis. [00:08:05] Pat Bagley: Okay, so Matt, Matt, is, is the cap, is that the Jefferson Memorial? [00:08:10] Pat Bagley: What? The cap on the, [00:08:12] Pat Bagley: on the thing? Oh [00:08:12] Daryl Cagle: my God. Oh, I think it is. Just me, yes. [00:08:16] Matt Wuerker: Only, only, only a cartoonist would gather the Parthenon. I don't know that's the Pantheon. No, the Pantheon. Okay, here you go. I wanted it. I'm sorry. Yeah. Go ahead. Go ahead. [00:08:28] Matt Wuerker: You were talking [00:08:28] Daryl Cagle: about the Jefferson Memorial. [00:08:30] Matt Wuerker: Only a cartoonist would catch that sort of thing, or, or subconsciously do it, but I'm terribly sophisticated and I try to work monuments and architectural details in all the cartoons. [00:08:40] Steve Breen: I think that the, uh, pink cherry blossoms around it are, [00:08:43] Matt Wuerker: that's a great time. [00:08:45] Matt Wuerker: See, see, I'm invoking Washington, [00:08:47] Pat Bagley: So why the Jefferson Memorial? [00:08:50] Matt Wuerker: because attempting to contain the contagion of Foxitis. It's the, it's democracy fighting back against fox. So it's not, it's nothing, it's nothing that sophisticated or anything like [00:09:02] Pat Bagley: that, but it's nice detail. [00:09:04] Pat Bagley: So [00:09:05] Daryl Cagle: So, Matt, here you've got flooding the zone with the January 6th committee hearings and Fox and mega media blasting it with all of this nonsense. I think that's great. It looks, like fun. [00:09:15] Matt Wuerker: Thanks. Thanks. Now I try to, I try to like throw some color and stuff and keep it somewhat on the light side, even though a lot of these topics are heavy and you don't want to trivialize too much. [00:09:24] Matt Wuerker: but this is the, uh, the Fox playbook, which is the Steve Bannon playbook, which is just flood the zone with the noise and bunk and all sorts of distractions when there's something going on. And that was going on big time during the January 6th hearings. Yeah. Yeah. [00:09:38] Daryl Cagle: I think cartoonists do society a service when we trivialize these things. [00:09:41] Matt Wuerker: ha ha ha [00:09:43] Matt Wuerker: Here's another one from you Matt here we have Tucker's tasty B. S. He says, I know it's complete B. S., but hey, they gobble it up. It's they're eating their Swanson's TV dinner. So this [00:09:52] Matt Wuerker: is great. [00:09:52] Matt Wuerker: Yeah, yeah, and a nod to Tucker being a trust fund kid from the Swanson's dynasty, so, I managed, I was happy that I got to fit that in. [00:10:00] Matt Wuerker: I was surprised, actually, that my, my editors let me, uh, that's where he got, he's really rich, he was rich before Fox, he was rich before Crossfire. You know, a real man of the people born with a few million dollars, in a trust fund. [00:10:11] Daryl Cagle: I used to love TV [00:10:12] Daryl Cagle: dinners. [00:10:13] Matt Wuerker: I was raised on them. I know. I know. [00:10:15] Matt Wuerker: Salisbury Steak. The kids today don't appreciate Salisbury Steak. [00:10:20] Matt Wuerker: My first experience with tater tots. Mm hmm. And then there's that little dessert square, too. You can't forget about that. [00:10:26] Matt Wuerker: So this Audrey 2 cartoon is wonderful, Matt. You've got a big Trump Audrey 2 about to gobble up [00:10:32] Matt Wuerker: the Republicans. This is great. [00:10:33] Matt Wuerker: I'm so glad you picked this one because this is one of my favorite Trump cartoons and I've got probably hundreds of them. This one I did, in 2016 when Trump basically secured the, uh, nomination at the convention. it's a reminder, I'm bringing this back to Fox News in some ways, but it's a reminder that the, the MAGA phenomenon goes back to the Tea Party phenomenon, really. [00:10:53] Matt Wuerker: And it's, the culmination of when Obama was elected in 2008, a Pandora's box was opened. And [00:11:00] Matt Wuerker: it was, [00:11:00] Matt Wuerker: to be frank, a lot of racist anxiety about the first black president, I think. There was a national freak out. And the Republican establishment led by Fox news. Spent eight years demonizing, birtherizing, Barack Obama and, eight years of that sort of toxic messaging, led, basically softened up the ground for the, for MAGA and Donald Trump. [00:11:24] Matt Wuerker: So it's sort of, it, you know that there are a lot of people in Washington talk about how, Trump's. Desire to run for president goes back to being humiliated by Obama. Do you remember that at the White House Correspondents Dinner and stuff? So, Trump is so tied up in the Obama moment in American history. [00:11:39] Matt Wuerker: And I think as time moves on, we'll have a better sense of, they're interconnected. A push that was met by another push, and then we ended up with this sort of descent down this rabbit hole that the country's been going through. Since we just got through Super Tuesday, the question is, do we go back down the [00:11:55] Matt Wuerker: rabbit [00:11:55] Matt Wuerker: hole? [00:11:56] Matt Wuerker: Well, I think there's a lovely metaphor because, the whole story is about how lovingly you nurture and fertilize and tend to this plant until it comes back to bite you. [00:12:06] Matt Wuerker: Yeah, but all of that, you know, the birtherism, it's like the, the fertilizer for this plant goes back to all the crap that they unloaded on Obama and that fertilized, this toxic plant and then they got consumed by it. [00:12:19] Daryl Cagle: So here you've got the MAGA Industries and the Gaslight Factory and the Big Lie. [00:12:24] Daryl Cagle: I like that you have all of the labels in here. This is a label cartoon, but the labels are what are, what's fun [00:12:30] Daryl Cagle: about it. [00:12:30] Daryl Cagle: Yeah, yeah, thanks. No, sometimes you have to resort to [00:12:33] Daryl Cagle: labels, [00:12:33] Daryl Cagle: but it's more, you know, more, more toxicity on an industrial scale [00:12:37] Daryl Cagle: here. [00:12:37] Daryl Cagle: cartoonists talk to each other about how, they try to avoid labels, but sometimes labels [00:12:42] Daryl Cagle: are fun. [00:12:43] Matt Wuerker: Yeah, and you gotta name names, [00:12:44] Matt Wuerker: too. Yeah. [00:12:46] Dave Whamond: Yeah, I like that you, with the, the big lie coming out with the black background, I think a lot of cartoonists would have gone the other way and done the black smoke with the white background, but it's kind of a nice spin on it. [00:12:56] Dave Whamond: It really pops out that way. [00:12:57] Daryl Cagle: Oh yeah, the black background makes it ominous. Yeah, for sure. [00:13:01] Daryl Cagle: Yeah, yeah, yeah, that was sort of my intent. Gets a whole mood to [00:13:04] Daryl Cagle: it. [00:13:04] Daryl Cagle: So here we've got more fast food. . Yeah. Megan, who? The whopper, the big lie burger. Over 72 million con to stop the steel hang pants. Maga maga King. [00:13:15] Daryl Cagle: this is [00:13:15] Daryl Cagle: great [00:13:15] Daryl Cagle: fun. [00:13:15] Daryl Cagle: Mm-Hmm, [00:13:16] Matt Wuerker: you don't, don't miss out on the, uh, dup dogs. And the window offered. Also the filet o chump. Excellent. . That's supposed to be Giuliani handing them out. [00:13:25] Daryl Cagle: They do serve it up [00:13:27] Daryl Cagle: fast. [00:13:29] Matt Wuerker: They do. They [00:13:30] Matt Wuerker: do. [00:13:30] Daryl Cagle: So here we got one from Adam Ziglas. I batched some big lies together. [00:13:34] Daryl Cagle: you got the January 6th commission cutting down the cherry tree of Trump's Pinocchio nose. It says, if a tree falls in a forest and Fox News viewers aren't around to hear it, does it make a sound? which I think is a kind of a disturbingly true [00:13:46] Daryl Cagle: point. [00:13:47] Pat Bagley: No, we're seeing it now with Fox News Fox News Viewers don't hear about, Trump trying to be a dictator. [00:13:52] Pat Bagley: They have not [00:13:53] Pat Bagley: heard that. [00:13:53] Matt Wuerker: They're not [00:13:54] Matt Wuerker: hearing it. [00:13:55] Dave Whamond: Well, even when he sat down at an interview with, I think it was Brett Baier or somebody, he was trying to steer him away from saying that because It's like he said, well, you don't really mean you're going to be a dictator and pick up on his like, well, yes, yes. [00:14:08] Dave Whamond: believe them. Really? [00:14:12] Dave Whamond: So here's Ed Wexler's big lie, you know, we did a whole podcast on Toilets and Trump, and, People were into Toilets and Trump. Uh, but when the regular old cartoonist tries to get a newspaper editor to print a poop cartoon, they just don't get reprinted. [00:14:26] Dave Whamond: Editors don't [00:14:26] Dave Whamond: like poop. [00:14:27] Matt Wuerker: Editors don't, you know, and the English love the poop. I'm very jealous of our English compatriots because they can draw all the poop that they want. [00:14:35] Matt Wuerker: And, uh, in fact, uh, uh, Martin Rawson, who draws for The Guardian, who draws a lot of poop in his cartoons, quite effectively and quite beautifully, he refers to it as the fecal imperative, which sounds even better with an English accent. [00:14:49] Daryl Cagle: So here's Andy Singer. This is another one that we would have trouble getting editors [00:14:52] Daryl Cagle: to print. [00:14:53] Daryl Cagle: We've [00:14:54] Daryl Cagle: got Fox News flipping the bird to the Fox News viewer, which is more, I think, a matter of the attitude that they have about their, viewers, But I thought this was kind of fun. [00:15:04] Daryl Cagle: cartoonists have a kind of macho attitude. We want to draw the harder hitting cartoons and then we have to get pushed back by the editors and that's [00:15:10] Daryl Cagle: always [00:15:11] Daryl Cagle: frustrating. [00:15:11] Dave Whamond: I'm almost wondering his expressions, almost like he's offended I think the Fox viewers would, if you're going to fully make fun of it, they would be. [00:15:19] Dave Whamond: Happily consuming [00:15:20] Dave Whamond: it. [00:15:20] Daryl Cagle: I think a very large part of what Fox is all about is fear they want their white suburban rural Audience to be afraid of all these terrible cultural and racial things that are happening around them and It's fear that sells. [00:15:36] Pat Bagley: I agree. But what follows on that is hate. They have to hate somebody. If they're going to be afraid, if somebody's making them afraid, they got to [00:15:42] Pat Bagley: hate that. [00:15:43] Pat Bagley: And [00:15:43] Pat Bagley: it's diversity, equity, and inclusion that is making them afraid they gotta hate it. And it's just [00:15:49] Pat Bagley: nonsense. [00:15:50] Daryl Cagle: So this is one of my cartoons. I have Fox saying, Be afraid, and I have the old couple who's watching it. [00:15:55] Daryl Cagle: One says, I need to go buy gold. The other one says, I need to go buy adult diapers. you know, the commercials on Fox are just as, crazy and defining of their audience. It's just, uh, The catheters and the pillow guy and, Fox News doesn't stop with the commercials [00:16:10] Daryl Cagle: start. [00:16:10] Matt Wuerker: Yeah, no, it's true. I think the average age of the Fox viewer is about 99. So it There there's that silver lining. I mean, I think it's actually true. I think that the the average viewer I think is that somewhere in their 60s. So, maybe [00:16:25] Daryl Cagle: that's true [00:16:26] Daryl Cagle: newspaper readers and editorial cartoon readers as well [00:16:29] Matt Wuerker: Yeah, and editorial cartoonists, too. [00:16:32] Daryl Cagle: Yes, a problem that we grapple [00:16:33] Daryl Cagle: with. [00:16:34] Matt Wuerker: Yeah. [00:16:34] Daryl Cagle: Here's Ed Wexler with, Trump, as, the kid in Poltergeist, transfixed by the evil spewing out of Fox News. And I just love it when cartoonists draw caricatures of the backs of people's heads. Yeah. I think there's just something so elegant about a caricature from the back of somebody's [00:16:51] Daryl Cagle: head. [00:16:51] Matt Wuerker: That's a beautiful caricature. [00:16:53] Dave Whamond: And Trump does have a very recognizable back, above his head, the way he swoops his hair back. And Ed did a nice job there, capturing that. [00:17:00] Pat Bagley: Oh yeah, that's [00:17:01] Pat Bagley: great. [00:17:01] Daryl Cagle: Here we have Englehart, and the doctor is talking to Uncle Sam in front of the x ray machine. He says, you have cancer, and the cancer is Fox News, of course, in his colon. I liked this one, too. Fox News is kind of a cancer eating up America. [00:17:15] Daryl Cagle: Mm hmm. [00:17:16] Pat Bagley: Oh, yeah. I think you can trace [00:17:17] Pat Bagley: the bright red line. [00:17:18] Pat Bagley: You can trace [00:17:19] Pat Bagley: the [00:17:19] Pat Bagley: trust in American Institutions that make us a country to 1996, when Fox News [00:17:25] Pat Bagley: was [00:17:25] Pat Bagley: first established, because you start 1996, and they said, we are giving you the truth, we're going to tell you the truth, but doing it by undermining every other institution that makes us a democracy. [00:17:36] Pat Bagley: They've undermined the press, and they're the press too. They're a big part of the media. But they're undermining the judiciary. They're undermining Congress. They're talking about the deep state all the time. And, it's because Fox [00:17:47] Pat Bagley: News [00:17:48] Pat Bagley: It's just cancerous. It is [00:17:49] Pat Bagley: cancerous. [00:17:50] Dave Whamond: Yeah. [00:17:50] Dave Whamond: And a lot of times something that's in the news, like when they're doing the January 6 hearings, I guess on Fox, they're, they're showing something about radon in your home or something, just the whole fear thing again. [00:18:00] Dave Whamond: It's like, this is what we're focused on. We're not going to talk about what's going on with the January 6 [00:18:04] Dave Whamond: hearings. [00:18:05] Dave Whamond: Here's Randy Enos. He's got, Fox News, farting and, uh, [00:18:14] Dave Whamond: suffering from the [00:18:15] Dave Whamond: stench. [00:18:15] Dave Whamond: I, God, I've never seen a cartoon part quite like I [00:18:19] Dave Whamond: get it. All right. This is also Randy. He's got a Fox News. [00:18:23] Dave Whamond: I guess vomiting out the happy, Fox news viewers that are sitting in the pungent [00:18:28] Dave Whamond: spew. [00:18:29] Dave Whamond: Not a lot of subtlety here. [00:18:30] Dave Whamond: Here is Schot from, the Netherlands and he's got Fox News leading all of the Headless Chickens. I kind of liked this one. Nice and simple. I would have given them red neck stubs. Maybe without that the editors liked it better. Editors don't like blood. [00:18:48] Daryl Cagle: Here's Jimmy Margulies, Garbage In, Garbage Out, Fox News, and the MAGA guy that results from it. [00:18:54] Daryl Cagle: I have noticed when we have our conservatives on the podcast, or talking to conservatives, the thing that annoys them most is the disrespect they get from the liberal cartoonists drawing the very good, law abiding, nice MAGA people as stupid. [00:19:09] Dave Whamond: Our, our, our job as cartoonists is to caricaturize people, though, and, you know, you see some of them on TV, and it's harder to caricaturize them, because they're already sort of, walking [00:19:18] Pat Bagley: caricature. [00:19:19] Pat Bagley: So, so, so, Steve, Steve Breen is probably the most conservative cartoonist among us right now. And I want to know, are we being unfair? [00:19:26] Steve Breen: No, not, not in my estimation. And I've, even though I'm conservative, I've, I've gotten that too, from, even from family members, offended at my depictions of, MAGA people and people who don't, you know, want the vaccine during COVID, you know, I was pro vaccine and I'm anti Trump, even though conservative, so. [00:19:44] Steve Breen: You can be both. Yeah. I guess, I'm concerned. I mean, everything's relative, right? So on the spectrum, these issues have kind of warped me, and now, to those people, I look like a liberal. [00:19:55] Dave Whamond: Yeah. But I think the whole, the whole Trump movement, I don't think is, uh, conservative really anymore, is it? You know? Yeah. [00:20:02] Daryl Cagle: Well, I was thinking of you, Steve, as kind of moderate. [00:20:05] Steve Breen: Yeah. I, I think I'm, I'm moderate, I don't think I've changed on the issues, right? [00:20:10] Steve Breen: Like, it's not like I've become more moderate. I think I've always been the same, but I guess I look more [00:20:15] Steve Breen: moderate [00:20:16] Steve Breen: because of the way the country's going. [00:20:18] Matt Wuerker: Well, and you're not alone too. I mean, look at Ramirez and Rick McKee and other people that I think of as like prominent, strong conservatives who got off the Trump train years ago too. [00:20:29] Matt Wuerker: Yeah, I [00:20:29] Steve Breen: know. I was, really proud of, Ramirez, for taking that [00:20:32] Steve Breen: stand. [00:20:33] Steve Breen: I would not have guessed he would've, I, I would've guessed that he would've been all in on Trump. [00:20:37] Matt Wuerker: Wouldn't it be interesting to see if he's paid a price in sort of conservative media? [00:20:41] Matt Wuerker: 'cause he was definitely a darling in a conservative media. I wonder if he's paid a professional price for not going along with the crowd. [00:20:48] Steve Breen: Yeah. [00:20:48] Steve Breen: Mm-Hmm. I know. I [00:20:49] Steve Breen: wonder. [00:20:49] Daryl Cagle: Well, there are new extra conservative cartoonists who seem to fill the gap. So it's not hard to find it, [00:20:55] Daryl Cagle: Okay, so I've got a few, uh, Hannity cartoons here. And they, uh They really do drink each other's Kool Aid. [00:21:05] Daryl Cagle: This is Steve Sack. God, I love that. I miss Steve Sack. And Steve Breen, here's another one of yours, who says, My vaccine position is unclear, says Fuzzy Hannity. I thought his vaccine position was pretty outrageously clear along with the rest of Fox. They were quite disturbing on that. [00:21:21] Steve Breen: yeah, this was done maybe in a moment there when he was saying, kind of talking out of two sides [00:21:26] Steve Breen: of his mouth. [00:21:27] Daryl Cagle: Okay. Pat, here's one of yours. You got Hannity and the guy with this candle at the mirror. He says, Chant Hunter's laptop three times and proof of Joe Biden's crimes will magically appear. [00:21:37] Matt Wuerker: Nice [00:21:39] Pat Bagley: caricature. thank you. [00:21:41] Pat Bagley: it Bloody Mary, Bloody Mary, Bloody Mary, and you're supposed to see, I don't know, [00:21:45] Pat Bagley: something? [00:21:46] Daryl Cagle: And Dave, here's one of your Hannity cartoons. You've got the Fox News Machine. You pour in Mark Meadows used personal emails to assist in coup attempt, and out of Hannity's mouth comes, they found Hillary's emails on Hunter Biden's laptop. [00:22:00] Daryl Cagle: I think that's fun. Good looking [00:22:02] Dave Whamond: machine. Whenever I can get an excuse to draw a Rube Goldberg contraption, I, take I'm always at the ready. But yeah, a lot of fun to draw, and, Hannity at the end, I thought that was kind of fun having him belt showed us all the, lies and nonsense that come up. [00:22:14] Daryl Cagle: It is a lot of nonsense. Pat, I like this one. They're, they're wearing their COVID masks over their eyes as they're hearing all this Trump nonsense about January 6th. [00:22:23] Pat Bagley: Okay, it's a little busy, a little [00:22:25] Matt Wuerker: No, it's not busy enough. Okay, spend a little time with it and it [00:22:29] Matt Wuerker: comes through. [00:22:30] Dave Whamond: I like the contrast though, it's super busy on the left and simple on the right. [00:22:34] Daryl Cagle: Fox News just didn't cover any of this, so they were blind to it. So this is from RJ Mattson, the January 6th committee hearings and the Republican elephant putting himself into his Fox News bubble. So none of that has to get [00:22:47] Daryl Cagle: through to him. [00:22:47] Matt Wuerker: That's beautiful. It is. [00:22:49] Steve Breen: I've never, I've never seen something like that drawn before. [00:22:52] Steve Breen: That's great. [00:22:53] Matt Wuerker: Yeah, you know, don't, don't, don't you get metaphor envy when somebody does something like that? [00:22:57] Matt Wuerker: It's like, damn. Totally. [00:23:00] Daryl Cagle: So here's Chris Weyant in the bar. The bartender has this, uh, TV on and says, which coverage of the impeachment hearings do you want to watch? [00:23:08] Daryl Cagle: The ones where Trump's guilty or the ones where Trump's [00:23:10] Daryl Cagle: innocent? [00:23:11] Pat Bagley: That's the truth [00:23:13] Daryl Cagle: changes from channel to [00:23:14] Daryl Cagle: channel. [00:23:14] Pat Bagley: So I think, I think some of us anyway are old enough to remember the Watergate hearings. And if there'd been a Fox News back in that time, Nixon would still probably be alive, probably still be president. [00:23:27] Dave Whamond: Remember when Obama's tan suit was the biggest thing going on in the news for weeks and, ah, the simple times, eh? [00:23:36] Daryl Cagle: So here you've got Ed Wexler with another ostrich cartoon with the Fox News. Couple, one's hiding his head in the ground, says, Credible witness, shmedible witness, I don't see that Trump committed any crimes. [00:23:48] Daryl Cagle: The wife says, Neither do I. Here he is. MAGA guy's watching Fox News says, I've been lying to you. And he says, I don't believe that. You know, they do admit that they were lying with all that lawsuit stuff, but they admit for about 20 seconds and then all the rest of the day you never hear it again. [00:24:03] Dave Whamond: And even when the judgment came out, they, I think they at first didn't announce the amount of the judgment or it was kind of like, and we were fine, 300 million, like, you know, they wouldn't admit how much they lost in the lawsuit. [00:24:17] Daryl Cagle: And all their crazy incriminating emails that they were reading on all the other channels never found, any voice on Fox. [00:24:23] Daryl Cagle: They're terrible emails. Really spelled out everything that they are. Here Pat, you have Tucker and Hannity and Murdoch, and they're saying we need to lie about election fraud to keep our audience, and the audience says, you get me. Yeah. I think that was [00:24:39] Pat Bagley: great. [00:24:39] Pat Bagley: They, they lie. They just lie. And, I don't know if I, Uh, it's, it's frustrating because I think most of us grew up in an era where news was more grounded in reality. But this is just pure propaganda. [00:24:52] Daryl Cagle: I naturally feel like I should believe what people say that they think when they say that they think that. [00:24:59] Daryl Cagle: And, these emails were all about how they. Knew what they were saying was wrong all along and they were calculating it. And it's because they do know their audience. And that's very disturbing. We hear that about The people in Congress, in the Senate, um, [00:25:13] Pat Bagley: Yeah. [00:25:14] Pat Bagley: Um, Actually, No, no, I mean, [00:25:15] Pat Bagley: I mean, [00:25:15] Daryl Cagle: believe something different when what they [00:25:16] Daryl Cagle: say. [00:25:18] Pat Bagley: Romney, uh, was interviewed by McKay Coppins, of the Atlantic, and he came out with a book about Romney, and I read the book, and Romney [00:25:29] Pat Bagley: has nothing good to say about any of his Republican co, co electors, or people who are in Congress. [00:25:35] Pat Bagley: Nothing. And I read this and I go, Why aren't you a Democrat? But he can't go there and I don't quite get it. [00:25:41] Pat Bagley: By the way, I'm proud of this Murdoch, [00:25:43] Pat Bagley: caricature. This is [00:25:43] Matt Wuerker: By the way [00:25:48] Daryl Cagle: Matt, here's one of your Murdochs, I put a few Murdochs together here You've got Murdoch pushing the escalator away for Trump to fall down, but this Might have been just drawn in a moment of [00:25:58] Daryl Cagle: optimism. [00:25:58] Matt Wuerker: It was, it was, it was, uh, when Trump started, the latest campaign and there were rumors that Rupert wasn't backing him. [00:26:05] Matt Wuerker: and I thought, oh, this would be one way to sort of capture it visually. And, you know, this happens sometimes to cartoonists, you get it all wrong. And, I think, it's interesting to see how Rupert may have desired to push the escalator away, but, In the end, Trump owns Fox more than Rupert. [00:26:20] Matt Wuerker: Maybe Rupert, maybe that has something to do with Rupert deciding to retire. No Rupert! He's no, you know, he. [00:26:25] Pat Bagley: Sorry, Rupert got it wrong. Because they were promoting DeSantis. They were pushing the DeSantis early on. He was the next guy [00:26:32] Matt Wuerker: and they thought Trump Trump's time had passed or whatever yeah, and this is something about you know, the puppet master finds out that no, he's actually the puppet. [00:26:41] Pat Bagley: Yeah Yeah [00:26:43] Daryl Cagle: Well, you know usually when cartoonists get it wrong. It's Because they're more pessimistic than they should be, I think, so, uh, I, I like optimistic cartoons. [00:26:51] Dave Whamond: I think when Trump lost the election, I think all of us cartoonists thought, uh, well, that's it. We had a fun four years, but, uh, you know, we got to, you know, try to make fun of Biden and we thought Trump was standing in his omelette bar in Mar a Lago And I thought he was just gonna fade away. [00:27:05] Dave Whamond: Nope. He's back. No vengeance. [00:27:08] Matt Wuerker: Nope. Yeah He's just like he's like COVID. He just sort of mutates And just when you think that we've got a vaccine and he's going to go away and drift away, he mutates and comes back [00:27:20] Matt Wuerker: stronger. [00:27:22] Daryl Cagle: Here's another one of yours, Matt. It's a Hindenburg cartoon, which is another one of those wonderful cliches that cartoonists all love to draw. [00:27:29] Daryl Cagle: Everybody's drawn a Hindenburg but you know, the Hindenburg never gets old. It doesn't. It doesn't. Yeah, and Rupert Murdoch says, Just further proof of our continued commitment to the highest standards of air travel. [00:27:43] Matt Wuerker: You know, the Woody Allen voice weirdly works with Rupert. I don't know. [00:27:50] Daryl Cagle: I don't have that many voices. That's a good one. Here's Adam Ziglis, Rupert says, You need a settlement too? Uh, boy, did they have all the sexual harassment, lawsuits. you know, I always think of that stuff as the tip of the iceberg, if you're going to hear about anything. So what a huge iceberg of sexual harassment must be hidden under the surface there. [00:28:11] Daryl Cagle: Oh, [00:28:11] Pat Bagley: oh, oh, we're, we're, I'm still waiting for Waters, because he's such a creep. So he knows it's going to come out. I'm just, I'm just waiting. [00:28:19] Daryl Cagle: Well, I, I, he bothers me for his, smarmy arrogance and, it just, runs chills at my spine. Yeah. [00:28:27] Pat Bagley: Yeah. [00:28:28] Matt Wuerker: Yeah. Yeah. It makes you, it makes you miss O'Reilly. [00:28:31] Pat Bagley: Yeah. [00:28:34] Steve Breen: I could only take him in small doses when he was on O'Reilly. You know, I, I, but, he's like Hannity. And that, uh, there's just, there's no substance there. There's just like a Smug meanness. Yeah, [00:28:46] Steve Breen: yeah. [00:28:46] Daryl Cagle: It's interesting to me that there is a lot of smugness on Fox. [00:28:50] Daryl Cagle: And, uh, that must be something that the audience likes. Yeah. You know, I'm liberal, and I see some smugness on MSNBC, and I don't like the smugness. Yeah. Um, so it's interesting to me that that culture would like the smugness. [00:29:06] Pat Bagley: I gotta say, I think you have to have grown up in a religious environment. to really appreciate how that [00:29:13] Pat Bagley: works. [00:29:13] Pat Bagley: I grew up in a [00:29:14] Pat Bagley: very, uh, [00:29:18] Pat Bagley: rigid religious environment, and you look to authority. You look to people who are smart, who know what, seem to know what they're talking about. I mean, if you look at Trump, even now, turn down the sound, he seems to be in command, and that's what people want. [00:29:32] Steve Breen: Well, I think, I think you're right, and if you look at, history, I think that it, what you're saying is, is borne out by looking at, you know, all the strongmen that, that have, existed from evil kings to dictators to people who control Russia today, you know? [00:29:50] Pat Bagley: Mm hmm. Mm hmm. Yep. Yep. Yep. Yep. [00:29:52] Pat Bagley: Exactly. [00:29:53] Dave Whamond: Oh, there's even people saying they admire Putin now, you know? And, and some of the, uh, even on Fox News, some of the commentators were, you know, it's, uh, who'd have thought we'd ever be there? [00:30:03] Daryl Cagle: Yeah. It used to be that humility and self deprecating humor were things that people found attractive. [00:30:08] Matt Wuerker: Yeah. [00:30:08] Daryl Cagle: Here's one I did back in the Occupy, time, and I liked the Occupy movement. They were, they were largely, uh, non violent, and I thought that was fun. But Fox News found the most clowns to put on TV. [00:30:21] Daryl Cagle: That just struck me. So here's, uh, Steve Sack and he's got King Trump saying, now that's what I call a messenger. [00:30:29] Daryl Cagle: That's good. [00:30:34] Daryl Cagle: That's awesome caricature. That was wonderful. I love the tongue licking his foot. [00:30:43] Daryl Cagle: Steve is great. And here we've got Chris Wyand again, and the principal at the school is saying, We've caught your son in a series of lies. We're concerned that he's headed to a career on Fox News. [00:31:02] Dave Whamond: I'll be making lots of bucks, so the parents will be proud. Yeah. [00:31:06] Daryl Cagle: Oh, boy. And, uh, here's Monty Wolverton with the Fox News World Atlas that's ethnically sensitive. [00:31:15] Daryl Cagle: That's where all those people live. [00:31:17] Matt Wuerker: Sorry, Dave. You're up there with the socialists. [00:31:20] Pat Bagley: That's the most socialist that's what you are, Dave. [00:31:25] Pat Bagley: I, did a Mormon mission. I was a Mormon missionary in South America and Bolivia, the heart of South America, and I had to teach them how to make tacos. [00:31:34] Pat Bagley: They're Mexicans, as far as they're concerned, they're just Mexicans. [00:31:42] Matt Wuerker: It's the weirdest thing, they know nothing about Taco [00:31:44] Matt Wuerker: Bell. [00:31:45] Pat Bagley: True, true. Okay, but this is just saying that America doesn't have a very [00:31:50] Pat Bagley: good, [00:31:50] Pat Bagley: accurate, informed view about the rest of the world. [00:31:53] Pat Bagley: We're pretty insular. We don't know anything about [00:31:57] Pat Bagley: the rest of the world. [00:31:58] Daryl Cagle: I gotta say, I watch our traffic pretty closely, both of these podcasts and who looks at the cartoons and what editors print the cartoons, and there is just, Fantastic disinterest in anything that happens outside of the borders of the United States. [00:32:12] Daryl Cagle: They just don't care about it. The readership drops off. I do a podcast about, uh, international, I do a podcast about anything but Trump bashing. And it doesn't get much traffic. It's very frustrating because, there's a lot of passion about those issues. You'll get mail from angry people about them, but People aren't going to look. [00:32:30] Daryl Cagle: It just kills your audience. [00:32:32] Steve Breen: Daryl, I would notice that too. Like if I would do a cartoon on, an, international issue, almost without fail, no matter what it was, what part of the world, and I posted on Facebook and I knew it was a pretty solid. Cartoon it would get so few, uh, likes such little interaction from people. [00:32:49] Steve Breen: And and I I know that that's why people just don't [00:32:52] Steve Breen: care [00:32:52] Pat Bagley: Yeah, yeah, [00:32:54] Daryl Cagle: it's frustrating on these issues that you'd like for people to care about, you know stuff like Ukraine or Israel and Palestine people don't want to see it They just don't [00:33:05] Daryl Cagle: want see it. [00:33:06] Steve Breen: Yeah. And I love, I for one, love doing stuff on international events because I think the is such a fascinating, interesting place, so much going on and so many bad guys out there that it draws editorial cartoonists to the issues that are happening. [00:33:19] Steve Breen: Lots of injustice. Lots of bullies out there, but [00:33:22] Steve Breen: In fairness, [00:33:23] Daryl Cagle: it's true with our international cartoonists as well. we can't get American editors to show any interest in the international cartoonists. We keep trying. And, internationally, it's hard for us to get international editors to have any interest in the American cartoons. [00:33:40] Pat Bagley: I'm so old that I remember Salt Lake Tribune used to print just international news on the front page, [00:33:47] Pat Bagley: had to go into the body of the newspaper to get the rest of it. But international news was top Above the fold every single day. no, no more people [00:33:56] Pat Bagley: who care [00:33:56] Dave Whamond: and then also in fairness to Americans I was going to say up here in Canada. [00:34:00] Dave Whamond: We get mostly American TV. So that's why we know so much about what's going on down there and We'll make you guys watch Canadian tv watch the CBC for the next month [00:34:12] Daryl Cagle: Well, we syndicate Dave Whamond's work, and he's a Canadian cartoonist, but we call him an American, and we put him up with the Americans on our site. We present him to the editors, and we don't make a secret that he's Canadian, but since he's with the American cartoonists, I don't think the editors even think about him not being American, and he does a good job of drawing like an American. [00:34:33] Daryl Cagle: But, you know, if we put you in the other column with the world cartoonists, even though you're drawing the same cartoons, I think hardly any of them would get printed. [00:34:41] Pat Bagley: So, so, so, I, I didn't know that Dave Whamond was, uh, Canadian. should have known it. See? Yeah. [00:34:49] Dave Whamond: I do draw some Canadian themed cartoons, but there's just so much stuff going on, you know, you can't help it. [00:34:54] Dave Whamond: It's just served up on a platter. [00:34:56] Pat Bagley: No, I gotta say you do a great job. Your stuff is wonderful. Oh, thanks [00:35:00] Pat Bagley: a lot. [00:35:00] Daryl Cagle: I think you make a great American cartoonist, [00:35:02] Daryl Cagle: Dave. [00:35:04] Pat Bagley: He is American. A lot of times we [00:35:08] Dave Whamond: think we're almost the same country, right? I think, you know, we're, we're very similar. I think we get all the same pop culture, everything. [00:35:15] Dave Whamond: So [00:35:16] Pat Bagley: you're North American, right? [00:35:18] Dave Whamond: Yeah, there we go. We'll, we'll call it North America. [00:35:21] Daryl Cagle: Well, sometimes, though, I think you get a little bit of pushback if somebody thinks that you're criticizing America and you're not an American. [00:35:29] Dave Whamond: Yeah, [00:35:30] Dave Whamond: I can see that. I'm just, I'm more thinking about the politicians themselves. [00:35:33] Dave Whamond: you know, that's, that's what I'm making a comment on. [00:35:35] Daryl Cagle: Okay, well, hey, this was our last cartoon, and I think we had a great podcast. I enjoyed you guys. Thank you for being here. Good to [00:35:43] Matt Wuerker: see all of you. Yeah. I'm good to see all. Yeah. Yeah. And, uh, hang on to your hats for the next eight [00:35:49] Matt Wuerker: months. [00:35:49] Steve Breen: Yeah. [00:35:50] Steve Breen: Yeah. [00:35:51] Matt Wuerker: It's going to be interesting. [00:35:52] Daryl Cagle: Well, Hey, thank you for coming. Remember to like, and subscribe to the Caglecast wherever you're watching it and join our mailing list at Cagle.Com. Subscribe and never miss out on a new Caglecast and. Thank you again so much, gentlemen, and I hope you'll come back sometime. [00:36:08] Daryl Cagle: Yeah. Thanks very much. [00:36:10] Matt Wuerker: Thanks for the invite. It [00:36:12] Steve Breen: was like a mini convention. [00:36:14] Dave Whamond: We'll have drinks next time. Yeah. [00:36:17] Matt Wuerker: Yeah. No, I brought my own [00:36:21] Daryl Cagle: good to meet you guys. See ya.