Artist Let Go After Controversial Trump Cartoon

On Wednesday, Canadian political cartoonist Michael de Adder tweeted a cartoon of President Trump that quickly went viral. On Friday, his contract with Brunswick News Inc. was terminated after 17 years. The artist says his controversial cartoon is to blame—it shows Trump, golf cart nearby, standing over the bodies of drowned migrants Óscar Alberto Martínez Ramírez and his daughter Angie Valeria and asking, "Do you mind if I play through?" (See the cartoon here.) The company, which publishes all the newspapers in New Brunswick, insists that is not the case, NBC News reports; in a statement, it says it had simply decided, weeks prior to the cartoon's posting, to bring back "reader favourite Greg Perry."

But de Adder takes issue with that, posting a cartoon of Donald Sutherland on Twitter Saturday and writing, "This was scheduled to appear today. Donald Sutherland receives the Order of Canada. He was born in New Brunswick. It was based upon a cartoon I did years ago for a book I did on the province. The fact that they didn't even run it is telling. All ties had to be cut ASAP." He adds, though, that he's "not a victim" and is still publishing cartoons in other outlets; HuffPost Canada notes that his work is syndicated in North America and regularly appears in large-circulation papers. Still, "it hurts pretty bad. I'm a New Brunswicker," he wrote, adding, "I loved drawing cartoons for my home province." In a lengthy statement on Facebook, the president of the Association of Canadian Cartoonists says it was in fact the Trump cartoon that caused the split, and explains why Trump is allegedly "a taboo subject" at BNI. (The New York Times recently deleted a controversial cartoon.)