Republican presidential hopeful Vivek Ramaswamy has called out an Iowa newspaper for printing a cartoon he called “bigotry”.
The Quad City Times, a Davenport, Iowa-based daily, issued an apology and retraction after a cartoonist depicted Ramaswamy greeting a group of Trump supporters who shouted racist things at him.
“We apologize today for allowing such an image to slip through our editorial process and into our opinion page on Wednesday in the form of a political cartoon,” Times editor Tom Martin said. in his apologies. “The cartoon, while intended to criticize racist ideas and epithets, uses a phrase that is racist and insensitive to members of our Native American community.”
The statement said the newspaper also severed ties with the cartoonist who drew it.
“The oversight that allowed it to work is inexcusable, and we can and will do better,” Martin said.
Ramaswamy, one of two American Indians in the Republican primary along with Nikki Haley, is a 37-year-old biotech executive who has cast himself as an anti-woke, pro-Trump presidential candidate. After the Quad City Times statement, Ramaswamy sent the editor a letter accepting the apology and saying the cartoonist should not have been let go.
“I empathize with people who make mistakes from time to time,” he said. “Let’s not go any further and see people getting fired for this, the cartoonist should not be ‘canceled’ in any way”.
This article originally appeared on NBCNews.com