Washington Post cartoonist quits after satire on owner Jeff Bezos gets rejected

Telnaes called the refusal by the paper to publish the cartoon as “game changer” and termed it as “dangerous for a free press”.

Telnaes, who has worked with the newspaper since 2008, drew Jeff Bezos, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and OpenAI’s Sam Altman kneeling before Trump’s statue. Along with them, a figure of cartoon character Mickey Mouse kneeling was also depicted.

Telnaes called the refusal by the paper to publish the cartoon as “game changer” and termed it as “dangerous for a free press”. (Photo: X/@AnnTelnaes)

Mickey Mouse probably referred to the ABC News, which is owned by Disney, and agreed to pay $15 million to Trump last month in a defamation suit filed by the president-elect against the news channel.

In a post on Substack, Telnaes wrote “I have had editorial feedback and productive conversations – and some differences – about cartoons I have submitted for publication, but in all that time I’ve never had a cartoon killed because of who or what I chose to aim my pen at.”

However, the Washington Post’s Opinion Editor David Shipley defended the paper’s decision to drop the cartoon and said that he disagreed with her “interpretation of events” and that “the only bias was against repetition”, reported The Guardian.

“My decision was guided by the fact that we had just published a column on the same topic as the cartoon and had already scheduled another column – this one a satire – for publication,” Shipley said.