Editorial cartoonist: Newspaper fired me for criticizing Trump

Veteran editorial cartoonist Rob Rogers created a cartoon to illustrate his claim that the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette fired him after he wrote cartoons critical of President Trump.

In a strip of cartoons published Tuesday on The Nib titled “I Was Fired For Criticizing Trump,” the longtime cartoonist began his story with a sketch of the president saying his infamous catchphrase: “You’re fired!” 

{mosads}“OK… He didn’t actually say that to me… But he might as well have,” Rogers wrote in the following frame of his termination from the paper after decades as its editorial cartoonist.

Rogers said he was fired from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette last month. According to Rogers, since assuming his position in March the newspaper’s editorial director, Keith Burris, had axed 19 of his cartoon ideas that were critical of Trump. Burris also reportedly wrote a controversial editorial in January defending a comment about “shithole countries” allegedly made by Trump. 

Burris said in a statement to a local CBS affiliate last month that the situation with Rogers was “a personnel matter which we are working hard to fix” and added that the paper has “great respect for Rob and understand his importance to the community.”

The paper’s publisher, John Robinson Block, who hired Burris, previously denied to Philly.com and The Washington Post that “internal” issues with Rogers had anything to do with “politics, ideology or Donald Trump.” 

The cartoonist claimed that he had been working under Block for more than 20 years without any problems, until the 2016 presidential election, when a local blogger reported that the publisher was considering endorsing then-candidate Trump. Philly.com has described Block as a Trump supporter.

“I began to envision the two of them as Master Blaster from ‘Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome,’” Rogers says in the comic strip. “My bosses said my cartoons were ‘not funny.’ Maybe they weren’t laughing because they were seeing their own beliefs laid bare on the editorial page.”

“Now, I’m unemployed, but on the bright side… There’s no one left to reject my cartoons,” Rogers says in the final frame.