Washington Post cartoonist quits after paper pulls her cartoon depicting Post owner Bezos groveling to Trump

A Washington Post cartoonist announced that she had quit the paper this week because it rejected her cartoon of Amazon founder and Post owner Jeff Bezos groveling to President-elect Trump.

In the article, "Why I'm Quitting the Washington Post," Telnaes said, "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. Until now."

The cartoonist shared a rough draft of the unpublished cartoon, which depicted Bezos and other unspecified wealthy businessmen genuflecting and holding up bags of money to the incoming president. Prostrating on the floor next to them was Mickey Mouse, apparently a representation of Disney's supposed subservience to Trump.

Telnaes explained her drawing, stating, "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."

Bezos recently pledged to donate $1 million to Trump's inauguration fund. He also had dinner with the incoming president at his Mar-a-Lago residence in December. 

Other prominent tech moguls have met with Trump in the months following his win, including Meta Platforms CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai and Apple CEO Tim Cook.

"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. So I have decided to leave the Post," she added. 

However, The Washington Post Editorial Page editor David Shipley - who admitted to making the decision to spike it himself - denied her accusation that The Post killed the cartoon for political reasons, saying in a recent statement that he did it to avoid "repetition" of a story.

He said, "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. The only bias was against repetition."

Telnaes has not yet responded to Fox News Digital's request for comment. 

Fox News Digital's Aubrie Spady and Aislinn Murphy contributed to this report.