Garrison alleges in his suit that when the famed Jewish non-governmental organization called one of his cartoons about wealthy Democratic financier George Soros anti-Semitic, it cost him “embarrassment, humiliation, mental suffering, anguish, injury to his name and professional reputation,” as well as an invitation to a Trump White House event.
The lawsuit is the latest foray into cultural and political wars for a cartoonist who has become notorious online for his adoring, elaborate drawings about the president and his enemies, many of which show a buff version of Trump easily defeating his foes in the Democratic Party and the “deep state.”
The rendering at the heart of the current legal drama dates back to 2017. In the drawing, Garrison depicted Trump national security adviser H.R. McMaster and former Gen. David Petraeus being controlled via puppet strings by Soros, who has long been the target of anti-Semitic conspiracy theories. In Garrison’s cartoon, Soros in turn was controlled by a ghoulish hand marked as the Rothschilds, the Jewish banking family that figures prominently in many anti-Semitic attacks. In a blog post, the ADL called the cartoon “blatantly anti-Semitic.”
