Trump's first month through the eyes of political cartoonists

Metaphors structure not only language but also thought, making them central to multimodal discourse, particularly in political cartoons. This paper examines how cartoonists used multimodal metaphors to depict Donald Trump during his first month as the 47th U.S. president, a key period for shaping public and media perceptions. A qualitative analysis of 25 cartoons from cartoonmovement.com, grounded in Conceptual Metaphor Theory, revealed recurring source domains such as TRUMP AS A CHILD, PET, SPOUSE, and PUPPET. These metaphors reflect deeper conceptual structures that portray Trump as dependent, manipulated, or irresponsible, undermining his agency and leadership. The study offers an account of the attitudes toward the second Trump presidency as reflected in political cartoons, a communicative medium widely recognized in research for its capacity to register and convey public sentiments on a broad range of socio-political issues. The research contributes to cognitive approaches to multimodal communication by a) showing how political cartoons use entrenched metaphors to make abstract political relations comprehensible, b) tracing how visual metaphors build on verbal ones, and c) demonstrating how multimodal strategies influence audience judgments and ideological positions.