The Douglas County Republican Party shared a racist cartoon on its Facebook page last week. The April 5 post features a cartoon of former President Donald Trump’s indictment, in which Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, who is Black, is depicted shouting angrily while presenting a banana to the court, which is meant to be his case against Trump.
Racist imagery isn’t anything new for cartoonist Ben Garrison, who in 2017 was dis-invited from a White House social media summit by the Trump Administration for a blatantly antisemitic cartoon. Garrison had previously penned an overtly racist cartoon attacking Michelle Obama as less attractive than Melania Trump.
Garrison has also depicted the Muslim religion as a murderous wolf. He explained that cartoon to Wired Magazine by saying, “It asked, do we really want to have this endless Muslim immigration? Is that really good for Western civilizations’ culture?”
This isn’t the first time the Douglas County Republican Party has shared racist content via its Facebook page. In 2019, following President Trump’s much-criticized tweet telling the so-called “Squad, (Congresswomen Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts, and Rashida Tlaib of Michigan) to go back where they came from, the DougCo GOP posted a meme of the four women of color, saying they hate “whites.” Later that year shared a meme calling Muslims terrorists.
The Douglas County GOP did not respond to a Facebook message asking if it considered the cartoon to be racist and if it had any concerns about the imagery. This article will be updated with any response received.
