Blog / 2026 / Sleepy Trump Coloring Page Protest Poster

In March, I made this piece to take with me to New York for the NO KINGS protest there. You can watch the making of the painting here.

Then, last Sunday, I made this black and white drawing of the same image as a coloring page protest poster.

I did this on June 14^th as a private form of protest against the event taking place on the White House lawn that day, the mixed martial arts fights celebrating of the Liar-in-Chief’s 80^th birthday. I needed to channel my anger around the wrongness of this spectacle.

Here are just some of the problems with the UFC Freedom 250 event:

• A president who spends tens of millions of dollars on an event to celebrate himself while the rest of the country struggles to make ends meet must be pretty confident that our democracy no longer functions and that he’ll never be held accountable for all the harm he’s caused.
• The UFC’s parent company, TKO Group Holdings, claims it has footed the bill for the event, but where did the money for managing the additional traffic in the capital come from? What about for all the extra security? It’s unclear who paid for what at this point, and that, in itself, is a problem for our democracy.
• Whatever the costs of the fights to TKO, this event is a gold mine in longterm benefits, and that’s bad for so many reasons, as this More Perfect Union video from early March explains.
• Trump became a TKO shareholder in late March, just as the promotion of this event really got going. In other words, the President of the United States used the White House to get people paying attention to a company whose stock he owns.
• One of the fighters yelled a racist and sexist slur about Michelle Obama into a mic while standing on the event’s stage. The 47^th POTUS has not condemned this behavior.

Instead, Trump fell asleep at the event.

I’m currently reading How To Be a Dissident by Gal Beckerman. The book is set up in chapters that are directives, like “be funny” or “be watchful.” The author elaborates on these simple instructions with examples taken from history, and, for the most part, it’s those stories that make me appreciate the book.

That said, there’s one chapter title in particular that stuck out for me:

Be pessimistic.

Beckerman argues that optimism can lead to passivity and therefore that, in order to be a dissident, one must have a hopeful sort of pessimism instead.

This blog post goes out to all those who refuse to look away from the democracy-ending event that is Donald Trump, to those who will not be coerced or shamed into shutting up about it all. I’m sending love to the hopeful pessimists of the world!

You can download the No Kingzzz Coloring Page for free and you can also send me a one-time tip via Ko-fi or monthly support via Patreon. Every dollar helps keep me making art.

Download the coloring page!