Award-winning political cartoonist Ann Telnaes has quit The Washington Post after a sketch depicting the newspaper’s billionaire owner Jeff Bezos groveling before Donald Trump was rejected.
Telnaes said that this was the first time she “had a cartoon killed because of who or what I chose to aim my pen at.”
The cartoon — which she included in her post — depicts Amazon founder and Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos, as well as Facebook and Meta founder Mark Zuckerberg and other media and tech moguls, kneeling and holding up bags of money before a massive Trump.
Also shown is a prostrated Mickey Mouse, the symbol of the Disney Company, which owns ABC News.
The television network recently reached a $15 million settlement with Trump after he sued for defamation over reporting on his sexual abuse trial in New York.
Telnaes wrote that while previous sketches of hers had been rejected, this was the first time that had happened because of her “point of view.”
“That’s a game changer […] and dangerous for a free press,” remarked the Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist who had been working for the Post since 2008.
Meanwhile, the publication, whose slogan is “democracy dies in darkness,” has said Telnaes’s work had not been rejected due to any “malign force.”
The US media aggressively covered Trump’s chaotic first term, which included two impeachments and ended with his refusal to recognise defeat in the 2020 election — culminating with a mob of his supporters storming Congress.
