Trump card: President of the United States takes cartoonist to court and loses

Published by Florence McCrae on May 30th 2020, 10:10am

Being taken to court by the President of the United States is perhaps not the first thing one expects to happen when creating a cartoon. Yet Pulitzer prize winning cartoonist, Nick Anderson, seems to have taken his quite unique situation in his stride.

Earlier this month Anderson published a cartoon called The Trump Cult for sale on Redbubble, an online retailer. The cartoon depicts Trump surrounded by Maga hat wearing supporters. Trump, unmistakably orange is serving his cult members from a cauldron which has been relabelled from Kool-Aid to Chloroquine to the eventual Clorox.

The first label is a clear reference to the Jonestown massacre in 1978 in which a cult leader ordered his followers to drink poisoned punch. The second refers to Trump’s theory that taking an anti-malarial drug is able to prevent Covid-19, in spite of wide scientific evidence to the contrary. The final label indicates the president’s belief that injecting bleach can prevent coronavirus.

Redbubble was forced to pull the comic when Donald J. Trump for President Inc. filed a trademark infringement campaign against Anderson. Anderson believes the case was due to his use of the Maga hats in his piece.

He tweeted: “We live in a strange time when the #POTUS can falsely accuse someone of murder with impunity (violating @Twitter’s terms of service), while at the same time bully a private business into removing content it doesn’t like.”

Thanks to the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund and other such free speech groups, Anderson’s comic has been reposted on Redbubble, with the site issuing a statement that read it strives: “to respect IP rights and freedom of speech, but we sometimes make mistakes, as we did here … We’re sorry for any inconvenience this has caused.”

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Authored By

Florence McCrae
Literary Editor
May 30th 2020, 10:10am

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