Cartoonist Loses Gig After Drawing Of Trump Golfing Over Drowned Migrants Goes Viral

WASHINGTON, DC - JUNE 25: U.S. President Donald Trump speaks to reporters about Iran and Mexico after signing an executive order establishing a White House Council on eliminating regulatory barriers to affordable hou... WASHINGTON, DC - JUNE 25: U.S. President Donald Trump speaks to reporters about Iran and Mexico after signing an executive order establishing a White House Council on eliminating regulatory barriers to affordable housing, in the Oval Office at the White House on June 25, 2019 in Washington, DC. The council, which will be made up of members of eight federal agencies, will reportedly be tasked with easing local barriers to the private sector of creating housing, according to published reports. (Photo by Mark Wilson/Getty Images) MORE LESS
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Canadian media company Brunswick News Inc. ended its contract with freelance cartoonist Michael de Adder over the weekend after his drawing of President Donald Trump and the Salvadoran migrant family that drowned near the southern border went viral.

Last week, de Adder tweeted his cartoon depicting Trump reacting indifferently to the bodies of Alberto Martínez Ramírez and 23-month-old Valeria, a family of asylum-seekers who both died while attempting to cross the Rio Grande.

Two days later, the cartoonist announced that his drawings would no longer appear in local New Brunswick outlets, including the Times & Transcript, the Daily Gleaner, and the Telegraph-Journal.

“I’m not the type of person who’s going to make a career out of being fired,” de Adder tweeted. “I’m still successfully drawing cartoons for other publications. I just need to recoup a percentage of my weekly income and get used to the idea I no longer have a voice in my home province.”

“Does it matter if I was fired over one Donald Trump cartoon when every Donald Trump cartoon I submitted in the past year was axed?” the cartoonist pondered on Monday. “It got to the point where I didn’t submit any Donald Trump cartoons for fear that I might be fired.”

Brunswick News Inc., the media company that owns those three outlets, denied on Sunday that it had ended its contract with de Adder over the cartoon.

“It is entirely incorrect to suggest Brunswick News Inc. cancelled its freelance contract with cartoonist Michael de Adder due to a cartoon depicting Donald Trump currently circulating on social media,” the company said in a statement. “This is a false narrative which has emerged carelessly and recklessly on social media.”

De Adder posted the cartoon on the same day reporters confronted Trump with the infamous photo. Although the man and his young daughter had died after spending months in a detention center in Mexico waiting for the U.S. government’s response to their asylum request (a result of Trump’s new asylum policy), the President blamed their deaths on “open borders” and Democrats for allowing “loopholes” in the immigration system.

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Notable Replies

  1. It is a sin to insult the Profit.

  2. Let’s hope Mike Luckovich doesn’t lose his job next. You never know the way things are being handled in some corners of the press…tRump may call in for access to him and the agreement will be no access unless they do something about shutting down that cartoonist they keep publishing.

    Suppression of reality really is a terrible thing.

    The NYT foreign op-ed page had its editor end its cartoons entirely over a complaint with one cartoon, so in a real sense, it could happen here with enough political arm-twisting and untoward hostility concerning various syndicated artists. Yep, we’re on the road to fascism.

  3. Avatar for rick rick says:

    Cartoon is unrealistic. Trump would never be so polite as to ask for permission.

  4. Avatar for sanni sanni says:

    Getting too close to showing that the barbarian emperor has no clothes, and is steeped in abject callous cruelty.

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