Award-winning cartoonist resigns after Washington Post rejects Trump satire

Ann Telnaes, an award-winning political cartoonist for The Washington Post, has resigned after the newspaper rejected a cartoon that depicted the newspaper’s billionaire owner, Jeff Bezos, kneeling before former President Donald Trump.

Telnaes shared her resignation on Substack late Friday, stating this was the first time she had a cartoon killed specifically due to the subject matter she chose to target.

The cartoon, which she included in her post, showed Bezos, along with other tech moguls like Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and Disney’s Mickey Mouse, kneeling and holding bags of money before a massive Trump.

In her post, Telnaes expressed that while some of her past cartoons had been rejected, this incident was different. "That's a game changer... and dangerous for a free press," she wrote, emphasizing the unusual nature of her rejection due to her "point of view."

The Washington Post responded by stating that Telnaes’s work was not rejected due to any “malign force,” but rather because the newspaper had already published a column on the same topic and had another satire piece scheduled.

Editorial page editor David Shipley added that the only bias was against repetition, not the content itself.

This controversy comes amid increasing concerns over the relationship between top media moguls and Trump, who is preparing for a second term as president.

Executives from Amazon, Meta, and other companies have made efforts to build ties with Trump’s camp, with Bezos and Zuckerberg both contributing to Trump’s inauguration fund.

Telnaes, who has worked for The Washington Post since 2008, won a Pulitzer Prize among other accolades for her sharp political cartoons. Her resignation marks a significant departure for the prominent political cartoonist.