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sycophant

Saturday June 18, 2022

June 18, 2022 by Graeme MacKay

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Saturday June 18, 2022

Hence, Mike Pence

The fate of a sycophant is never a happy one.

July 21, 2020

At first, you think that fawning over the boss is a good way to move forward. But when you are dealing with a narcissist — and narcissists are the ones who like to be surrounded by sycophants — you can never be unctuous enough.

Narcissists are Grand Canyons of need. The more they are flattered, the more their appetite for flattery grows.

That is the hard, almost fatal, lesson Pence learned on Jan. 6, when he finally stood up to Donald Trump after Trump asked for one teensy favor: Help destroy American democracy and all we stand for.

Two new photos shown at a hearing of the House committee investigating Jan. 6 tell a shocking story — one of the most incredible in our nation’s history.

August 15, 2017

In one, Karen Pence is protectively pulling a gold-fringed curtain shut in the vice president’s ceremonial office in the Capitol, off the Senate floor, as Pence — sitting beneath a large gilt mirror — stares off into space, probably wondering where it all went wrong.

We learned this week that when the vice president fled down the stairs, followed by an Air Force officer carrying the nuclear launch codes, the marauding mob was a few feet from him.

In a second picture, taken after Pence was brought to a secure location in an underground garage, his daughter Charlotte is anxiously watching him. He is holding a phone to his ear as he stares at another phone showing a video of Trump professing love for the crowd, which included some who carried baseball bats and zip ties and chanted “Hang Mike Pence!”

July 18, 2016

In the early afternoon, as the crowd tore down barricades and fought police, White House staffers worried things were “getting out of hand,” as Sarah Matthews, a Trump aide, testified.

They thought that the president needed to tweet something immediately. At 2:24 p.m., they got a notification that the president had indeed tweeted. But it was not the calming tweet they had hoped for; it was one designed to drive the rioters into a frenzy.

“Mike Pence didn’t have the courage to do what should have been done to protect our Country and our Constitution, giving States a chance to certify a corrected set of facts, not the fraudulent or inaccurate ones which they were asked to previously certify,” Trump tweeted. “USA demands the truth!”

As Matthews recalled in her deposition, “The situation was already bad, and so it felt like he was pouring gasoline on the fire by tweeting that.”

Trump was still steaming from the contentious morning phone call when he failed to persuade the vice president to reject some of the states’ electors so they could be replaced with fake electors who supported Trump. He had railed at Pence with emasculating epithets.

January 20, 2017

As Trump recalled in a speech on Friday in Nashville, “I said to Mike, ‘If you do this, you can be Thomas Jefferson.’ And then, after it all went down, I looked at him one day and said, ‘I hate to say this, but you’re no Thomas Jefferson.’”

In the same speech, Trump had another line that was strikingly delusional, even for him. “For the radical left,” he said, “politics has become their religion. It has warped their sense of right and wrong. They don’t have a sense of right and wrong, true and false, good and evil.”

February 8, 2022

Trump sparked the mob to seek vengeance against Pence the same way Henry II sparked a crew to murder Thomas Becket, the archbishop of Canterbury, in 1170. According to legend, after Becket defied Henry by excommunicating bishops supportive of the king, Henry muttered something to the effect of, “Who will rid me of this meddlesome priest?” Four knights immediately rode to Canterbury Cathedral and sliced up Becket.

The line became a famous example of directing loyalists with indirection, cloaking an order as a wish. Who will rid me of this meddlesome vice president?

A Times video, showing how the Proud Boys breached the Capitol, underscored that within the confederacy of dunces, there was an actual organized conspiracy. The group began plotting even before the election to take up arms for Trump. When Trump barked “Stand back and stand by” about the Proud Boys during his debate with Joe Biden, the Proud Boys felt as though they had received a directive, like Henry’s knights.

The Bengal Levee, by James Gillray | The Marquess Cornwallis (1738-1803) was made British Governor-General of India in 1786 and a Marquess in 1792. He held a weekly levee at Government House, making a point of speaking to all those who attended. Here Cornwallis is standing in the inner room on the right, his right hand on his breast and his left in the pocket of his breeches, awaiting chat time with a following of sycophants. Not far off from the current parade of Republicans who gather for meet and greets at Mar-a-Lago.

With each hearing, it becomes clearer that Trump has no plausible deniability. He put the lives of the vice president and his family at risk, as well as the lives of lawmakers, by sending a crowd, stewing in lies, into a frenzy.

Pence did not have the power to do what Trump wanted, and it’s good that he resisted the insane, illegal and unconstitutional plan of the narcissist in the Oval. But Pence still wants it both ways. He has steered clear of the committee. He wants to become president by staying on the good side of Trump supporters, but they’re never going to forgive him.

January 6, 2022

At the end of the day of infamy, John Eastman, the nutty lawyer trying to help Trump overturn the election, sent an email imploring Pence to adjourn the congressional certification so sympathetic state legislators could help with Trump’s fairy tale of a rigged election.

When Greg Jacob, Pence’s counsel, showed the email to the vice president, Pence said, “That’s rubber room stuff.”

The fate of a sycophant is never a happy one. (Maureen Dowd – The New York Times) 

Letter to the Editor, The Hamilton Spectator, Thursday June 23, 2022 

Pence did well

Letter to the editor

I really do appreciate Mr. MacKay’s daily offerings filled with wit, insight and hilarious satire, whether I agree with his message or not. I do however take exception with the depiction of Vice President Mike Pence as subservient lap dog to a delusional, narcissistic sociopath, his boss. Mike Pence displayed real courage, honour and dignity in the face of unpredictable violent behaviour and refused to comply with that megalomaniac’s demand to circumvent the peaceful transition of power. Whether you agree with his politics or not, when offered an escape from danger, Mike Pence refused, checking on the safety of staff instead, during perhaps one of the most dangerous moments in American history.

To quote the great Rudyard Kipling, “ if you can keep your head while all about you are loosing theirs and blaming it on you … yours is the world and all that’s in it And, which is more, you’ll be a man my son.” You did good Mike.

Claudio D’Amato, Stoney Creek

 

 

Mike Pence did the routine VP act of certifying election results. Courage would’ve been denouncing the sham of the big lie instead of staying silent since #Jan6th & on the sidelines currying favor with Trumpies pic.twitter.com/Fwow6qtyql

— Graeme MacKay (@mackaycartoons) June 23, 2022

 

Posted in: USA Tagged: 2022-20, Donald Trump, Feedback, history, insurrection, legacy, memorial, Mike Pence, statue, sycophant, USA, Washington D.C

Friday May 17, 2019

May 24, 2019 by Graeme MacKay

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Friday May 17, 2019

Conrad Black says he won’t answer to criticism of his pardon because it’s not ‘worthy of response’

‘On anything like this you’re going to get people saying it’s a back-scratching job and he’s just rewarding me for writing nice things about him, but so what?’

Conrad Black Cartoon Gallery

Media mogul and former rival Rupert Murdoch was among the well-wishers who called Conrad Black after he received a pardon Wednesday from U.S. President Donald Trump that wiped away convictions for fraud and obstruction of justice dating back to 2007.

“I had a very nice phone call from Rupert Murdoch. I hadn’t spoken with him for many years. Most thoughtful of him to call,” Black said in an interview Thursday in the living room of his home in Toronto.

“He congratulated me and he said he’d congratulated the President for doing it.”

Calls have been coming in “from all over the place, from people I knew when I was a guest of the American people (in prison) and from people I went to Grade 2 with, and all stages since then,” said Black.

“And all but one or two were really very gracious, quite affecting many of them.”

Asked how he would respond to people who say he received the pardon because of Trump’s tendency to view only facts that suit him, or due to the past business dealings the two men had, or the flattering articles and book Black has written about Trump, Black said he wouldn’t respond directly to such critics because he doesn’t find their position “worthy of response.”

“Look, on anything like this you’re going to get people saying it’s a back-scratching job and he’s just rewarding me for writing nice things about him, but so what? Some people criticize Santa Claus, some people find fault with everything,” he said.

“The President and the very gracious message the White House issued last night was very clear in saying what the motives were, and that they were an analysis by his legal counsel and their legal team of the facts of the case, analyzing the particular materials submitted on my behalf by (lawyer) Alan Dershowitz and others.”

Black views the pardon as a total exoneration. “It’s a complete final decision of not guilty. That is finally a fully just verdict,” Black told The Canadian Press on Thursday. (Source: National Post) 

 

Posted in: Canada, USA Tagged: 2019-18, adoration, book, Canada, columns, Conrad Black, dance, Donal Trump, love, obsequious, pardon, Presidential, sycophant, USA

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Please note…

This website contains satirical commentaries of current events going back several decades. Some readers may not share this sense of humour nor the opinions expressed by the artist. To understand editorial cartoons it is important to understand their effectiveness as a counterweight to power. It is presumed readers approach satire with a broad minded foundation and healthy knowledge of objective facts of the subjects depicted.

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