Know your deplorables
Photographs of political and media figures associated with the Presidency of Donald Trump (2017-2021).
Published in 2017 by “A Patriotic LLC”, this pack is reminiscent of those published in the early years of the 21st century criticising President George W. Bush and the invasion of Iraq in 2003. But the targets here are the political and media figures associated with the Presidency of Donald Trump (2017-2021). Each card presents a photograph of a prominent Trump supporter (including Trump himself, his daughter Ivanka, his two sons, Eric and Donald Jnr., and son-in-law, Jared Kushner), one of their quotes, and details of “the deplorable things they have said and done”.
There is an accompanying leaflet which lists the sources of the quotations used and image attribution information. Some of the photographs are crossed through indicating that the person concerned was one of the many individuals who resigned or was fired during the Trump Presidency. Both the box and the card backs bear the same version of the US flag, but the cards have the phrase “cards against democracy” while the box shows “Know your deplorables”. A portion of all proceeds from the sale of the pack went to ProPublica and the Center for Investigative Reporting. See the box►
Above: ‘Know your deplorables’ playing cards published by A Patriotic LLC, 2017.
Note: I assume that the reference to “deplorables” in the title of this pack refers to the phrase “basket of deplorables” used by Hillary Clinton in 2016 during her Presidential election campaign to describe "half" of the supporters of her opponent.
By Peter Burnett
United Kingdom • Member since July 27, 2022
I graduated in Russian and East European Studies from Birmingham University in 1969. It was as an undergraduate in Moscow in 1968 that I stumbled upon my first 3 packs of “unusual” playing cards which fired my curiosity and thence my life-long interest. I began researching and collecting cards in the early 1970s, since when I’ve acquired over 3,330 packs of non-standard cards, mainly from North America, UK and Western Europe, and of course from Russia and the former communist countries.
Following my retirement from the Bodleian Library in Dec. 2007 I took up a new role as Head of Library Development at the International Network for the Availability of Scientific Publications (INASP) to support library development in low-income countries. This work necessitated regular training visits to many sub-Saharan African countries and also further afield, to Vietnam, Nepal and Bangladesh – all of which provided rich opportunities to further expand my playing card collection.
Since 2019 I’ve been working part-time in the Bodleian Library where I’ve been cataloguing the bequest of the late Donald Welsh, founder of the English Playing Card Society.
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