Washington Post cartoonist quit after drawing Bezos, other billionaires besides Trump were dismissed

AND The Washington Post cartoonist quit newspaper, saying bosses blocked publication of satirical cartoon depicting billionaires, including one resembling a post office owner Jeff Bezoskneeling before the newly elected president Donald Trump.

Ann TelnaesPulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist, said in a blog post on Friday that she is give up paper after the drawing was rejected. This was the first time at the Post that a cartoon was “killed because of who or what I chose to point my pencil at,” Telnaes wrote.

A rough sketch of the cartoon, posted on Telnaes’ blog Substack, shows several men kneeling before a larger man in a suit and long tie, representing Trump. Telnaes wrote that the similarities of Meta platform CEO Mark ZuckerbergOpenAI CEO Sam Altman, Los Angeles Times Publisher Patrick Soon-Shiong and Bezos. Three men are holding bags of money. Also included is a drawing of the Mickey Mouse cartoon character it represents Walt DisneyABC News.

The paper rejected the drawing in its entirety, with no suggestions for possible changes, Telnaes told CNBC in an email.

David Shipley, the Washington Post’s editorial page editor, said in a statement that the cartoon was rejected because of its similarity to newspaper columns, not who it was aimed at.

“I respect Ann Telnaes and all she has given to The Post. But I have to disagree with her interpretation of events. Not every editorial judgment is a reflection of a malign force. My decision was guided by the fact that we had just published a column on the same subject as the cartoon and already scheduled another column — this one a satire — for publication the only bias was against repetition,” Shipley’s statement said.

The cartoonist’s departure comes amid controversy over how the media and corporate executives treated Trumpboth before and after the November election.

The The Washington Post reported that Bezos hit hard planned support of Trump’s opponent Kamala Harris list on the eve of the presidential elections. At the Los Angeles Times, Soon-Shiong also decided that the paper should withhold any confirmation in the presidential race, which prompted the resignation of several members of the editorial board.

ABC News, meanwhile, settled with Trump in a defamation lawsuit 15 million dollarswhich drew criticism from some media law experts who felt the news outlet had strong arguments.

Bezos and Zuckerberg planned to donate a million dollars to Trump’s inauguration fund through Meta, The Wall Street Journal reported last monthand were among several billionaires who have met with Trump at his Mar-a-Lago home since his election victory. Multiple outlets have reported that OpenAI’s Altman is as well donating a million dollars to the inaugural fund.

Sen. Elizabeth WarrenD-mass, weighed on Telnaes’ resignation at X, saying the cartoon was “worth a share”: “Big tech executives are siding with Donald Trump, and it’s no surprise why: Billionaires like Jeff Bezos like to pay a lower tax rate than public school teachers.”

Telnaes’ departure is the latest of several internal shakeups at the Post. Publisher and CEO Will Lewis took over the paper last year and clashed with the editorial staff, as reports NPR. Since Lewis took over the paper, several top editors have left.

In 2001, Telnaes won the Pulitzer Prize for editorial cartoons. She wrote on her blog that she had worked for the Post since 2008.