"Beijos dedicating his money to Trump"...Washington Post's controversy over deletion of satirical cartoons

The writer resigned after the Washington Post (WP) refused to publish a satirical cartoon about Amazon founder Jeff Bezos's "cheating Trump."

According to foreign media such as the Associated Press and the BBC, Washington Post's satirical cartoonist, Antelnace, claimed in a post on an online platform on the 4th local time that satirizing Bezos and others was unfairly rejected.

Telnace explained that the satirical cartoon showed Bezos, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman kneeling in front of a statue of U.S. President-elect Donald Trump and offering a bag containing a bundle of money.

It is a critical description of their recent donations of $1 million (about 1.47 billion won) to Trump's inauguration preparations.

Telnace added that he also depicted Mickey Mouse lying on his stomach in a sarcastic way that ABC, owned by Disney, paid Trump $15 million (about 21.5 billion won) in settlement and ended the defamation lawsuit.

"This commentary is about criticizing billionaire IT, media giants for flattering the next president," Telnace said.

"There has never been a 'kill' of a satirical cartoonist depending on what target my pen targeted," he said, adding, "This is a threat to freedom of speech."

"I have decided to resign from the WP," he said. "I don't know how much impact my decision as an author of the classic cartoon will have, but I will never stop giving power to the truth. Democracy is because it dies in the dark."Telnace, who also won the Pulitzer Prize for

, has worked for WP since 2008.

The WP explained that Telnace's claim was due to misunderstanding, and that it did not publish a satirical review to avoid duplication because the same column has already been published and other similar columns are scheduled.

David Shipley, WP editorial page editor, explained that "not all editorial judgments were caused by malicious pressure."

The WP was previously embroiled in a controversy over Bezos' influence during last year's U.S. presidential election.

The WP has publicly supported Democratic candidates in every presidential election since 1976, except in 1988, when it drafted an editorial in support of Vice President Kamala Harris, who was the Democratic nominee in the last presidential election, but it was not published due to Bezos' opposition.

As criticism spread that Trump made the decision in consideration of his re-election chances, Bezos explained that the decision was made to increase the credibility of the media, not to his personal interests.