AAEC-feed Editorial cartooning

Editorial Cartoonist Dis-Invited to White House – updated

Skip to comments

D. D. Degg July 10, 2019 1 minute 0 comments

Editorial cartoonist Ben Garrison’s invitation to a White House Social Media Summit has been withdrawn.

After news of the White House inviting Ben Garrison was made public, a backlash from all sides of the political spectrum erupted over the Administration asking an accused Anti-Semitic cartoonist to meet with the President.

When news of the invite broke a number of supposed anti-Semitic cartoons by Ben Garrison were showcased on various sites – the most infamous being the one shown above.

THE WHITE HOUSE told us last night that Ben Garrison, the cartoonist who drew this cartoon that has been widely labeled anti-Semitic, will no longer be attending the administration’s social media summit. As of Tuesday morning, Garrison was invited — he posted the invite he got on Twitter — and people in the administration were privately defending the invitation.

BUT IT DID TAKE ALL DAY to get the White House to engage on this subject. At first, they responded to questions about Garrison by offering a boilerplate statement saying that President DONALD TRUMP “wants to engage directly” with people who have experienced social media bias.

WE THEN started asking questions directly of people who have hailed Trump as a leader quashing anti-Semitism: Jared Kushner, Jason Greenblatt and members of Congress. Greenblatt, Kushner and his spokesman Avi Berkowitz did not respond. It was then that a senior administration official told us that Garrison would no longer be attending the event.

Politico’s Playbook has the story and more about the Social Media Summit.

Ben Garrison has responded on Twitter:

UPDATE

Ben Garrison has released an official statement on the matter:

Reclaimthenet.org has the story including Scott Adams and others defending Ben.

Elsewhere the Arizona Jewish Post discusses the current fuss and Garrison’s previous cartooning history with Ben himself; including some of his earlier cartoons that were changed and defaced by the extreme far right.