Pittsburgh cartoonist says he was fired after 25 years for making fun of Trump

"Rob Rogers lost his job at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette on Thursday in move he says, "'goes against what a free press is all about'":

"A cartoonist who lost his job at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette believes his searing portrayals of Donald Trump were the most likely cause of his firing.

"Rob Rogers was terminated on Thursday by the paper for which he had worked for 25 years, after six cartoons in a row were spiked and his employer tried to change his terms of working, he said.

"His last cartoon depicted a bloated man representing the USA, impaled on a steel girder with 'trade war' written on it, waving the Stars and Stripes and saying: 'Take that, Canada, Mexico and Europe.' 

"After being fired, Rogers drew Trump shaking hands with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un and saying: 'You’re so talented and your people love you, look how they’re smiling!'

"Kim is standing on a pile of skulls...

"Rogers was a finalist for the Pulitzer prize in 1999, for cartoons that skewered then president Bill Clinton, mostly for the Monica Lewinsky scandal. He said he was feeling 'anger and outrage' but added: 'I saw this coming a while back.'

"After leaving the Post-Gazette, Rogers wrote an editorial for the New York Times headlined: 'I was fired for making fun of Trump...'

"After a series of cartoons satirizing Trump were canceled this month, he said, he was sent a list of new working conditions he called draconian, subjecting him to an unprecedented level of oversight and 'clamping down' on his power of free expression. He refused to accept and was fired, he said..." (The Guardian).