So it seems an indeterminate number of herpes-infected lab monkeys escaped following a car crash in Mississippi, and I couldn’t help fantasizing about how much better off we’d be if one of them were president.

Honestly, how far down the current line of succession do you have to go before “herpes monkey” fails to represent a significant upgrade?

“Have you heard? Rubio’s out! The new Secretary of State is a monkey with herpes!”

“Oh wow, that’s fantastic; that monkey will do a much better job, even accounting for the herpes!”

“Not only has the new Defense Secretary stopped bombing fishing boats in the Caribbean and dumping $70 million jets into the sea, but he also dresses better! Shame about the herpes!”

A guy can dream, can’t he?

I confess it’s challenging promoting a comic book about a patriotic superhero (see how I slid that in there?) while our all-but-visibly-decomposing Rapist in Chief schlumps around Asia in a dementia haze, proclaiming BEANS IN OUR TIME as he hands our most advanced, valuable technology over to our greatest rival.

(Decent of Xi to refrain from picking the sloppy old fop’s pocket during that handshake, frankly.)

Cutting-edge semiconductor chips in exchange for a smaller soybean purchase than before the senseless trade shenanigans started? It’s all right there in Chapter 9 of The Art of the Deal: Digging Yourself a Hole So You Can Buy a Ladder to Climb Out.

I’m just glad everything got resolved before poor, downtrodden soybean farmer Scott Bessent had to pull up stakes and embark, Joad-like, on a cross-country journey in search of a better life picking fruit in the orchards of California.

As we saw in Japan, this sundowning halfwit can no longer walk through a room unassisted, which explains why he needed that MRI at his second “annual” physical at Walter Reed. And not to impugn anyone’s cognitive fitness, least of all a veteran giraffe drawing identifier like Dear Leader, but I’d sleep better if we left stuff like testing the nation’s nuclear arsenal to a monkey with herpes.

Of course, as a resident of Chicago, I suppose I’m mostly just worried he’ll test them on us.

Yeah, life’s a blast under Operation: Let’s See What We Can Get Away With. I particularly enjoy watching little Greggie Bovino joyriding around town in his Spirit Halloween soldier suit, like he’s commanding Marines in Fallujah instead of ordering Proud Boys to gang up on landscapers.

I wonder, does he hand out medals for shooting pastors with pepper balls? For breaking a 67-year-old man’s ribs? For tear-gassing children?

The Reich actually purged ICE leadership this week…because the old crew wasn’t shitty enough.

Governor Pritzker asked our brownshirt occupiers to demonstrate juuuuuust enough basic human decency to let kids trick-or-treat in peace, but Kristi Noem said WHAT PART OF RACIST HATE CULT DO YOU NOT UNDERSTAND?

Because the cruelty is the whole dang point.

Well, the cruelty and the white supremacy.

Shit, Bride of Stephen Miller apparently already believes she gets to deport anyone she loses an argument to, a policy that would leave America with a workforce barely capable of staffing a Sunglass Hut.

When Tucker Carlson sits down to mingle hatreds with Nick Fuentes, it’s hard to tell who’s normalizing whom, I just hope somebody peed in the candy dish in the green room.

In the aftermath of this Pasty Mediocrity Summit, the Heritage Foundation was shocked, SHOCKED, to discover anti-Semitism in the Republican Party. And like…fucking spare me, okay?

You know who wasn’t shocked? JD Vance. When a spindly groyper creep belched up some bargain basement bigotry at a TPUSA event (FUNNY, THAT), JD absolutely leapt into his panderin’ pants, because he understands that without these little freaks, he’ll have nothing to run on but his record of inflation, layoffs, and petty spite.

So expect more talk of demons and pet-eating Haitians on the campaign trail, plus don’t worry, JD doesn’t let his heathen wife indoctrinate the children.

No, he’s a good Christian, which is why his administration needed a court order from a federal judge to distribute contingency funds to SNAP recipients as is required by law. Looking forward to wearing my WHWJW hat (that’s Whose Hunger Would Jesus Weaponize?) to all his rallies.

Gotta be careful I don’t mix it up with my Who Would Jesus Disenfranchise cap, which is reserved for Mike Johnson shutdown press conferences. The answer, of course, is the American citizens residing in Arizona’s 7th congressional district, who’ve been denied their constitutional right to representation for a record 37 days now by the Christianest Christian who ever shielded a pedophile. No wonder the Dotard boasts so openly about Mike’s submissiveness.

I see Elon rolled out his racist alternative to Wikipedia, taking us one giant step closer to that incel utopia where a blackpilled dork won’t have to visit reality at all, except to eat, shit, and die. Yeah, turns out WALL-E was the naively optimistic take on humanity’s future.

A new social media ad campaign from the Department of Labor showcases the diversity of the MAGA coalition: white folks with blonde hair and blue eyes, brown hair with brown eyes, plus I think I saw a ginger in there, but don’t worry, we’ll get to them soon enough.

As much fun as I’m having paying more at the grocery store, paying more for my electric bill, and paying more to service my mild-but-manageable coffee addiction, paying for Kash Patel to jet around the country with his girlfriend (ew) was probably my favorite Trump tax for the week, if I absolutely had to choose.

NO WAIT, it’s paying to house the enemies of democracy on military bases so they can hide from protesters! NO WAIT, it’s Javier Milei’s bailout karaoke night! NO WAIT, it’s Donnie Two-Dolls’ surprise desecration of yet another section of the White House, this time giving the Lincoln Bathroom a Hampton Inn remodel!

Aw, who’m I kiddin’? Nothing tops the thrill of shelling out for the Your Reagan Commercial Hurt My Fee-Fees surcharge. In a week or so, he’ll be rambling next to some pliant CEO or fidgety head of state about how hard it is to walk down stairs, and he’ll suddenly weave over to bragging about all the billions he “found on the tariff shelf,” and I’ll beam, cuz some of that money was mine.

Good thing I’m not on the hook for any dumb ol’ disaster aid for blue states! Shoulda checked the electoral college map before you moved someplace nature could get at, chumps!

I’m sure there’re plenty of MAGA billionaires who aren’t in the Epstein files, just not the one who volunteered to shell out $130 million to pay the troops during the current government shutdown. I’m equally sure an oligarch has lots of fun reasons to want history’s mightiest military force in his personal debt, possibly first dibs on one of these 500-troop “quick reaction forces” coming soon to all 50 states in this, the healthiest of all possible democracies.

Texas Apparatchik General Ken Paxton sued Tylenol’s parent company for concealing the product’s links to autism, which even the heroin addict with the cranial parasite admits cannot be proven. Additionally, a grand jury has been impaneled to consider charges against the planet’s whale population for having such tantalizingly juicy heads.

I guess there were still a couple of prosecutors left at the Justice Department who think the Capitol Riot was bad, but they’ve been suspended for disparaging insurrectionists in a sentencing memo for one of the many pardoned terrorists who committed additional crimes. (Not the child porn guy, this one just wanted to assassinate Obama.)

Nancy Mace enjoyed another public meltdown, this time berating local law enforcement for unsatisfactorily escorting her through an airport. She’s so stupendously shitty and unstable it’s hard to imagine anyone mounting a serious challenge to her in a Republican primary.

ANYWAY.

I want to thank everybody who pledged during the opening week of the Kickstarter for my new comic book, and stare with great big dewy doe eyes and a trembling lower lip at everybody who has yet to pledge.

GENERAL WASHINGTON AND THE LIBERTY TREE is my love letter to America during a time when loving America hasn’t been easy. I for one refuse to cede patriotism to the rat bastards squatting in what’s left of the White House, and if you feel the same way, you’ll dig this comic.

I could really use your support, particularly here in the middle weeks of the campaign, which are traditionally, um, bleak. The art, by Jason Muhr, is brilliant, and check out this praise:

(If those names don’t mean anything to you, you need to read more comics.)

Okay, the tip jar is still open, too (accepting Venmo, Cash App, and PayPal!), and there’s always room on the email list. Follow @john_luzar, and please please please stay safe out there, chum!