President Trump has invited an anti-Semitic cartoonist to the White House for a social media summit, but left out both Facebook and Twitter.
Ben Garrison, a political cartoonist affiliated with the far-right, posted the invitation on his Twitter account on Friday.
‘The President requests the pleasure of your company for The Social Media Summit to be held at The White House on Thursday, July 11, 2019, at three o’clock,’ the invitation reads.
Garrison tweeted: ‘Honored to be invited to the White House! Thank you Mr. President!’
Earlier this year, Instagram disabled his account for violating its terms of use.
In August 2017, the Anti-Defamation League slammed Garrison for what is said was a ‘blatantly’ anti-Semitic cartoon.
It shows H.R. McMaster, who at the time was Trump’s national security adviser, and retired four-star Army general David Petraeus performing in a puppet show.
Their puppet strings are being pulled from above by George Soros, the Hungarian Jewish financier who has contributed money to numerous liberal causes and is considered an enemy by conservatives.
In the cartoon, Soros is also a puppet whose strings are pulled from above by someone with reptilian hands.
The name on the sleeve reads ‘Rothschilds.’
The Rothschilds are the famous European Jewish banking dynasty whose name has been historically invoked by anti-Semites and conspiracy theorists who blame them for the world’s ills.
At the time the cartoon was drawn, McMaster was assailed by Trump supporters as a ‘globalist’ who stood in the way of the president’s ‘America First’ agenda.
McMaster eventually left the White House.
The ADL said that the cartoon by Garrison was allegedly commissioned by Mike Cernovich, the alt-right blogger and radio host who is best known for promoting the Pizzagate conspiracy theory.
‘Pizzagate’ alleged that senior members of the Democratic Party were running a child sex ring from the basement of a Washington, DC pizzeria.
Cernovich is also a regular guest on Infowars, the web site run by far-right conspiracy theorist Alex Jones.
After many on social media noted that the cartoon was anti-Semitic, Cernovich replaced it with a cropped version that removed the ‘Rothschilds’ puppeteer.
The ADL said that the original cartoon went viral on Reddit discussion sites and other social media platforms.
Meanwhile, the White House did not invite Facebook, Google or Twitter to the social media that’s shaping up to be a platform for conservatives to air their grievances against dominant tech companies.
Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and other tech CEOs are expected to be in Idaho at the time of the president’s July 11 event for Allen & Co’s annual media conference.
The invite-only media and tech summit, held each July, for one week, in Sun Valley, Idaho, brings together the crème de la crème of the entertainment industry.
Allen & Co’s event has been held annually for decades, and the timing of the White House’s event suggests that Trump never intended for the heads of Twitter, Facebook or Alphabet Inc., the parent company of Google, to attend.
President Trump’s social media director Dan Scavino was temporarily banned from Facebook earlier this year for violating its policies.
A White House spokesperson declined to comment on how a serious social media summit could be held without representatives of the major social media companies.