'MAD Magazine' put out a book that was a collection of Trump cartoons, and they asked me to do the forward because they knew that I was a fan because I'd done stories and tweeted about 'MAD.' So I did the forward and asked them if I could do a cartoon. They let me, and I did caricatures of myself and Wolf Blitzer.

I did freelance cartooning off and on from college graduation in 1991 through ABC News hiring me in 2003. I did a weekly comic strip for 'Roll Call' for about nine years. I sold cartoons and caricatures to 'The Los Angeles Times' and 'The Washington Post.' I drew as much as I could. It's really tough to make a living doing it.

When you write fiction, there were things about Washington that I've experienced and wanted to write about, including the swamping nature of it, the compromises people come to town and are forced to make, and also, when writing about Joe McCarthy, the indecency and lies that he put forward that people didn't take a stand about.

McCarthyism and Trumpism are very different. They stand for very different things, but the technique of the big lie, smearing and telling lies, you know, McCarthy was doing that. At the time, the media, Democrats, and Republicans were all paralyzed - not all, but most of them were paralyzed. They didn't know how to deal with this.

Terrorism and trade policy are clearly topics where Trump expresses the fears and concerns of many American people. There is a widespread feeling in this country that the government has been too willing to go into trade deals that sent American jobs to Mexico or to China. The affected communities feel left behind. It is one of the reasons for Trump's rise.

I get that that the violent illegal immigrants will be removed from the country. But what I am not hearing and I am wondering, for people out there - and, look, it’s not just the liberal media, right? It’s also conservatives. It’s Rush Limbaugh. It’s Governor Sarah Palin. It’s other people who want Donald Trump to win who are saying, wow, it sounds like he is really backing away from this deportation force…

Let's all recognize that, in a world full of disgusting dictators, Bashar Assad maybe ranks at the top. This is a guy, in order to hang on to power, has allowed 400,000 people in his own country to be killed and millions to be displaced. Our goal, long term, has got to work with countries around the world. We cannot do it unilaterally. We've got to work with countries around the world for a political solution to get rid of this guy and to finally bring peace and stability to this country, which has been so decimated.

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