Today's Daily New Yorker Cartoon: Halftime at the Felony Finals

Breaking News: Hunter Biden is not running for President, and yet...

The Felony Finals

This month’s highly publicized trials have both sides frothing at the mouth. The media are obviously making a sport of the false equivalency. It’s not helping anyone.

We’re 145 days out the Election. That’s just over 4 months until we cast our vote for who we want in the big seat until 2028. Putting aside the obvious false equivalency here (Yes, just to be super-clear; I’m aware Hunter Biden isn’t running for President) the whole idea that these trials will have a meaningful bearing on those who have already made up their minds is lunacy.

If we’ve learned anything from history (which we rarely do) it’s that nothing is predictable anymore in these elections. Wearing the wrong tie on the campaign trail could have cost you votes in 1968. Now you can be convicted of [falsifying business records to conceal a sexual encounter with a porn star], and your menu options remain the same.

Polling is no longer an accurate gauge for the temperature of the electorate. Swing voters make decisions based on what they ate on their way to the polling booth, and the idea that the sales of Presidential felon coins are now being used as a metric for who will win gives us a clear indication that this election could be won with the flip of a coin at this point. What a mess.

Back in 2020 when we did a Fight Night-style boxing poster for the New Yorker ahead of the debate, we were told by shrill commenters that we were “literally endangering democracy itself” by, in any way, directing criticism to both sides. (For the record; the poster is 99.999% jokes about Trump, with an Amtrak reference, and one ironic reference to Trump’s dopey* nickname for Biden.)

*He shouldn’t be throwing around insults like “Sleepy” these days…

But, sadly, cartoons have now become more of a rorschach test than ever; people will see in them whatever they want. They will then ascribe intent to the artist based on their interpretation. It’s one of the many reasons I don’t do a lot of political cartoons these days. I did them for 15 years before seeing how toxic and deranged the whole information miasma has become. I hope this one lands the way we intended, but I’m not holding my breath.

If any contrast is worth noting, it’s each candidate’s reaction to the respective charges: When Trump was convicted on 34 felony counts, he attacked a “rigged” justice system¹. This is what President Biden had to say about Hunter’s conviction:

“I will accept the outcome of this case and will continue to respect the judicial process as Hunter considers an appeal.”