Donald Trump invites artist of 'blatantly antisemitic' cartoon invited to the White House

A cartoonist condemned for a “blatantly antisemitic” illustration showing Jews controlling high ranking American security officials has been invited to the White House by Donald Trump to take part in a social media summit.

Ben Garrison, a far-right cartoonist whose drawings are extremely popular among Trump supporters and the alt-right, posted a picture on social media of his invitation to the White House this Thursday for the summit, tweeting that he was “honoured to be invited”.

In 2017, Mr Garrison, who describes his cartoons as “politically incorrect”, published a picture showing the former director of the CIA and senior general, David Petraeus, and the then National Security Adviser, H.R McMaster, as puppets.

Above them, George Soros, a Jewish Hungarian billionaire, can be seen making them dance to his strings, while Mr Soros, also drawn as a puppet, is himself manipulated by a hand marked “Rothschilds”.

Both Mr Soros and the Rothschild family are the focus of antisemitic conspiracy theories falsely alleging that they control senior world figures and world events.

The Anti Defamation League, America’s foremost antisemitism watchdog, described the cartoon as “blatantly antisemitic”, adding that "the thrust of the cartoon is clear: McMaster is merely a puppet of a Jewish conspiracy."

Although a number of Mr Garrison's cartoons have been redrawn by the alt-right to include further antisemitic themes, even Mr Garrison's unchanged cartoons have a history of employing mentions of Mr Soros and the Rothschilds in his work, along with other supposed parts of the “deep state” which are, in his opinion, attempting to prevent Donald Trump from enacting his political agenda.

Jake Tapper, a Jewish news anchor at CNN, highlighted the ADL's condemnation of Mr Garrison on Twitter while noting his invitation to the White House.

Mr Garrison responded by calling Mr Tapper "pathetic".