Washington Post cartoonist says editors axed cartoon depicting Trump, Bezos

A longtime cartoonist at The Washington Post resigned after leadership reportedly killed a cartoon depicting newspaper owner and billionaire Jeff Bezos bending his knee to President-elect Trump.

“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,” Ann Telnaes wrote Friday in a post on Substack titled, “Why I'm quitting the Washington Post.” 

“Until now,” she added.

Telnaes's resignation comes as tech and business leaders have made their way to Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home in Florida for meetings, seemingly building a bridge with the incoming president in recent weeks — a shift from his first term in office.

The cartoonist, who joined the Post in 2008, said an editorial editor axed her art, which depicted Trump alongside a handful of tech and media titans, including Bezos, Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg, OpenAI’s Sam Altman, Los Angeles Times owner Patrick Soon-Shiong and Mickey Mouse, representing the Walt Disney Company and ABC News. 

“The cartoon that was killed criticizes the billionaire tech and media chief executives who have been doing their best to curry favor with incoming President-elect Trump,” she wrote. 

David Shipley, the editorial page editor at The Post, rebuffed the allegation, stating the only "bias" in his decision to not run the cartoon was "repetition."

"I respect Ann Telnaes and all she has given to The Post. But I must disagree with her interpretation of events," he said in a statement to The Hill. "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 topic as the cartoon and had already scheduled another column — this one a satire — for publication," he added.

In early December, Amazon, which Bezos founded, announced it would donate $1 million to Trump’s inauguration fund and also make a $1 million in-kind contribution. Bezos personally congratulated the incoming president on his election victory as well, labeling it “an extraordinary political comeback.” 

“EVERYBODY WANTS TO BE MY FRIEND!!!” Trump wrote Thursday on Truth Social, after having dinner with Bezos in Florida last month.

The Hill reached out to Trump’s transition team for comment. 

Telnaes's cartoon also spotlighted recent media moves that have prompted backlash, including ABC News's $15 million defamation suit settlement with Trump as well as the Los Angeles Times owner's decision to scrap a presidential endorsement of Vice President Harris.

Bezos, who also killed a piece from The Post supporting Trump’s opponent this fall, has been widely criticized by readers and staffers alike. The billionaire tech and media entrepreneur defended the move, stating that newspaper presidential endorsements create “a perception of bias.” 

“Ending them is a principled decision, and it’s the right one,” Bezos wrote in October. “I would also like to be clear that no quid pro quo of any kind is at work here. Neither campaign nor candidate was consulted or informed at any level or in any way about this decision. It was made entirely internally.”

Telnaes joins an exodus of journalists that have left Bezos's paper, as reported by Puck, in recent months.

“As an editorial cartoonist, my job is to hold powerful people and institutions accountable. For the first time, my editor prevented me from doing that critical job,” Telnaes wrote. “So I have decided to leave the Post. I doubt my decision will cause much of a stir and that it will be dismissed because I’m just a cartoonist.”

“But I will not stop holding truth to power through my cartooning, because as they say, ‘Democracy dies in darkness],’” she added.