Sen. Bernie Sanders sitting on the Senate steps leads to comparisons to a classic US civics cartoon
tmitchell@insider.com (Taiyler Simone Mitchell) - Yesterday 10:26 p.m.


Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), whose amendment was defeated 1-99, sits in the shade on the steps of the Senate as the Senate proceeds through a series of amendment votes, also called "vote-a-rama, on the Inflation Reduction Act at the U.S. Capitol on Sunday, Aug. 7, 2022 in Washington, DC. 

Kent Nishimura / Los Angeles Times via Getty Images

Sen. Bernie Sanders was captured in a photo sitting on the steps outside of Capitol Hill.

The photo caught the eyes of internet users who compared him to a cartoon in an educational song.
Seated Sanders has been the face of a meme at least once before.

Senator Bernie Sanders has become a meme once more.

Known affectionately by some as Uncle Bernie, the 80-year-old senator was captured by Los Angeles Times photojournalist Kent Nishimura sitting on the steps outside the US Capitol during a 15-hour Sunday "vote-a-rama" to pass the Inflation Reduction Act — a $740 billion climate, healthcare, and tax package.

New York City photographer Clayton Cubitt posted an apropos comparison of the photo with an image from a Schoolhouse Rock song called "I'm Just a Bill."

The song, written by Dave Frishberg and performed by Jack Sheldon, has become an educational staple since its release in 1976 —teaching children about the process a bill undergoes before it's turned into law by way of a catchy tune.

Related video: Watch Sanders criticize climate and health care bill on Senate floor
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"I'm just a bill. Yes, I'm only a bill," the song begins. "And I'm sitting here on Capitol Hill," the song continues, showing the seemingly exhausted animated paper roll sitting on the steps as Sanders did on Sunday.

 
The photo comes after another meme of Sanders sitting in a chair at President Biden's inauguration in January 2021 made its rounds on the internet featuring the Senator photoshopped into a variety of situations.


Former presidential candidate, Senator Bernie Sanders (D-Vermont) sits in the bleachers on Capitol Hill before Joe Biden is sworn in as the 46th US President on January 20, 2021, at the US Capitol in Washington, DC. 

BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/AFP via Getty Images

 
When interviewed afterward by Seth Meyers on his late-night TV show, Sanders explained that he was simply "just sitting there trying to keep warm, trying to pay attention to what was going on."

"Sen. Sanders has a very well-defined brand and image," Brendan Smialowski, the photojournalist who snapped the photo viral Sanders-mitten photo, told CNBC in 2021. "He is who he is and he's comfortable in that and it's very much part of his politics."

"It was a nice slice of life," Smialowski said. "It's just Bernie being Bernie."

Exclusive photos: Trump's telltale toilet

• Mike Allen, author of Axios AM

Photos from Maggie Haberman via Axios

Remember our toilet scoop in Axios AM earlier this year? Maggie Haberman's forthcoming book about former President Trump will report that White House residence staff periodically found wads of paper clogging a toilet — and believed the former president, a notorious destroyer of Oval Office documents, was the flusher.

Why it matters: Destroying records that should be preserved is potentially illegal.

Trump denied it and called Haberman, whose New York Times coverage he follows compulsively, a "maggot."

• Well, it turns out there are photos. And here they are, published for the first time.

Haberman — who obtained the photos recently — shared them with us ahead of the Oct. 4 publication of her book, "Confidence Man: The Making of Donald Trump and the Breaking of America."

• A Trump White House source tells her the photo on the left shows a commode in the White House.
• The photo on the right is from an overseas trip, according to the source.

Trump spokesperson Taylor Budowich told Axios: "You have to be pretty desperate to sell books if pictures of paper in a toilet bowl is part of your promotional plan."

• "We know ... there's enough people willing to fabricate stories like this in order to impress the media class — a media class who is willing to run with anything, as long as it anti-Trump."

Between the lines: The new evidence is a reminder that despite the flood of Trump books, Haberman's is hotly anticipated in Trumpworld.

Cover: Penguin Press

Haberman's sources report the document dumps happened multiple times at the White House, and on at least two foreign trips.

• "That Mr. Trump was discarding documents this way was not widely known within the West Wing, but some aides were aware of the habit, which he engaged in repeatedly," Haberman tells us.
• "It was an extension of Trump's term-long habit of ripping up documents that were supposed to be preserved under the Presidential Records Act."

The handwriting is visibly Trump's, written in the Sharpie ink he favored.

• Most of the words are illegible.
• But the scrawls include the name of Rep. Elise Stefanik of upstate New York, a Trump defender who's a member of House Republican leadership.

Go deeper: A radical plan for Trump's second term