Before Donald Trump became seriously interested in politics and ran for office as a Republican, he was a darling of the left. Garry Trudeau was one of the few from the left-side of the political spectrum who has never really shown much liking for Trump and that can be seen in reading YUGE! a collection of 30 years of “Doonesbury” strips that feature or revolve around Trump. In reading the strips, one can see that Trudeau never really cared for the man. However, the tone in how Trudeau characterizes Trump changes over the years. The earliest strips in the collection feature Trump more as a rich and sleazy, buffoon. He’s portrayed more as a cartoon character than a real person and it’s obvious that while the writer doesn’t like the man, he just sees him as character that can’t really be taken all that seriously. This portrayal continues through most of this collection.
In fact, while the book tries to give the allusion that the writer took Trump seriously early on as a legitimate political threat, the collection illustrates elsewise. The last strip in the book is from April 2016 and even at this point in time, while it appears likely that Trump might have a legitimate chance of winning the Republican nomination, the artist doesn’t take Trump seriously. Instead, he takes the boisterous bluster that Trump speaks and promotes and augments it by several degrees. I think in doing so, Trudeau’s intention was to make Trump appear and even bigger cartoon than he had ever before featured him and that there was no way possible he could ever become President of the United States. Looking back at it now, it kind of illustrates the major error of the left: they never really took Trump seriously. The issue is now reversed as since the day after the election, that side of the political aisle seems to take Trump way to serious about everything, which is probably a mistake, too. Life’s all about balance and there’s very little balance in YUGE!
Overall, YUGE! is a somewhat humorous and interesting read because it shows what the political left thought of Trump before he became a serious political contender. Outside of that, fans of “Doonesbury” might enjoy the collection, but because of the limit in scope and topic, perhaps not.
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