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Cruz fires back at Washington Post with a cartoon of his own

by Elliot Smilowitz - 12/23/15 3:21 PM ET

After crying foul over a Washington Post editorial cartoon that depicted his children as “political props,” presidential hopeful Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) turned the tables Wednesday with a drawing of his own.

“Seems like a better idea for a cartoon: Hillary and her lapdogs,” Cruz wrote on Twitter.

Attached to the tweet: An image showing Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton walking two dogs labeled as The New York Times and The Washington Post.

Seems like a better idea for a cartoon: Hillary and her lapdogs. pic.twitter.com/dou9c7fS4U

— Ted Cruz (@tedcruz) December 23, 2015

The Post on Tuesday retracted their original cartoon after a firestorm of controversy.

The animated cartoon featured a Santa Claus-costumed Cruz winding a music box as two leashed monkeys dance in elf costumes. The monkeys represent Cruz’s daugthers, Caroline, 7, and Catherine, 4.

{mosads}”Classy. @washingtonpost makes fun of my girls. Stick w/ attacking me–Caroline & Catherine are out of your league,” Cruz tweeted Tuesday with a link to the cartoon.

Cartoonist Ann Telnaes wrote that Cruz waived the “unspoken rule” to leave politician’s kids out of campaigns with a TV ad that ran during last week’s “Saturday Night Live.”

“When a politician uses his children as political props, as Ted Cruz recently did in his Christmas parody video in which his eldest daughter read (with her father’s dramatic flourish) a passage of an edited Christmas classic, then I figure they are fair game,” Telnaes wrote when the cartoon was published.

On Tuesday evening, a note from editor Fred Hiatt appeared on The Washington Post’s website reading: “It’s generally been the policy of our editorial section to leave children out of it. I failed to look at this cartoon before it was published. I understand why Ann thought an exception to the policy was warranted in this case, but I do not agree.”

Tags Hillary Clinton Ted Cruz The Washington Post