An artist blasted by the Anti-Defamation League for creating a “blatantly anti-Semitic cartoon” has been invited to the White House by President Donald Trump.
Cartoonist Ben Garrison proudly tweeted his invitation to join a “Social Media Summit” this coming Thursday at the White House. The invitation was called out on Saturday by CNN’s Jake Tapper.
Trump’s Social Media Summit is expected to address the president’s complaints that social media platforms’ policies against threats and hate speech are blocking conservative voices.
Two years ago, Garrison created an inflammatory cartoon depicting Jewish billionaire philanthropist George Soros using puppet strings to control then-Gen. H.R. McMaster, who was serving as Trump’s national security adviser at the time, and retired Gen. David Petraeus. The image was a nod to an anti-Semitic conspiracy theory that a secretive international Jewish cabal controls the world. In the cartoon, Soros is being controlled by a hand labeled the “Rothschilds,” a famous Jewish banking family.
The ADL wrote at the time that the “thrust of the cartoon is clear: McMaster is merely a puppet of a Jewish conspiracy.”
Garrison revealed on his website that he was commissioned to create the image by his “good buddy” Mike Cernovich for the right-wing provocateur’s website, which was then attacking McMaster. (The version of the cartoon that Garrison shows on his own site has cropped out the hand of the Rothschilds.) Cernovich, who is characterized by the Southern Poverty Law Center as a misogynistic white nationalist, promulgated the “Pizzagate” conspiracy theory that Hillary Clinton and other prominent Democrats were running a child sex trafficking ring from a Washington pizzeria.
The ADL has described Garrison as an artist “known for cartoons with right-wing, anti-government and conspiratorial themes.”
Neither the White House nor Garrison could immediately be reached for comment.
