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A 10-Year-Old Sums Up Donald Trump In One Drawing
I know we're looking to our favorite celebrities and authors and idols to make perfect observations on the final presidential debate for us to like and retweet on social media, but maybe we should instead be looking to children instead. On Wednesday night, entertainment writer Logan Hill shared his 10-year-old daughter's drawing of Donald Trump from the debate — and she perfectly nailed Trump's policies in this image. Not all of them, of course, but one of the biggest and the most controversial ones, i.e. his desire to deport "criminal" immigrants and "bad hombres" from the country. The fact that someone so young has been watching the debate and, from Trump's rhetoric, managed to pull out this insightful image really says a lot about how the candidate has been running his campaign and what future generations are seeing him as a representation of.
Hill, whose work has appeared in New York Magazine, Glamour, and Esquire, is one of the numerous people live tweeting the debate, and has been keeping his followers informed about the fact that his daughter had begun "live cartooning" the debate. He shared the final result of that work, which turned out to be an image of an orange man deporting all the other fruits (or, at least, all the bananas) in order to Make America Great Again. In case you were unclear on who the orange was supposed to be, Trump is written in large letters at the top left hand side of the picture.
It's a hilarious image, but it's also chilling in a way. Of all of the many, many reasons to be concerned about the divisive, misogynist, and racist rhetoric that Trump has pushed throughout his campaign, one of the largest causes for concern is the effect his campaign will have on the next generation. It's terrifying to think of what little girls and boys are learning when Trump identifies misogynistic comments like "grab her by the p*ssy" as "locker room talk," and it's terrifying to think of what little girls and little boys are learning when Trump states that he wants to get rid of all the "bad hombres" we have here. It's terrifying to think of what little girls and little boys are learning when they see that someone can say these kinds of things and make it almost all the way to the White House with that as a platform.
Because it's clear that, while all the nuances of his words may be lost on them, children have enough of an understanding of what Trump says he wants to do to, well, live cartoon it. The drawing is adorable, and it is funny, but it's also a bittersweet moment for me. Even if Donald Trump loses the election, we'll still have to face future generations and try to explain his campaign and his policies to them. Or maybe we won't have to explain. Maybe they already understand, and they're already shaking their heads as often as I find myself shaking my head. Or maybe they're drawing pictures like this one, that say more than any words possibly could.