“Dilbert” cartoonist Scott Adams, who became infamous at the end of his career for promoting racism and conspiracy theories, was praised by President Donald Trump after his death on Tuesday.
Adams died at 68 after previously announcing that he had prostate cancer.
“Sadly, the Great Influencer, Scott Adams, has passed away,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social account. “He was a fantastic guy, who liked and respected me when it wasn’t fashionable to do so.”
Trump said Adams would be “truly missed” and concluded, “God bless you Scott!” The message was posted alongside a photo of Adams and Trump in the Oval Office of the White House.
The death was also noted on the official White House account on X with an apparently AI-generated image of Trump, Vice President JD Vance, and Dilbert with the caption “Rest in peace, Scott Adams.”
“Racist douchenozzle” by Clay Jones
Adams was the creator of the “Dilbert” comic strip, which was once one of the most widely syndicated comic strips. Dilbert also appeared for a brief time in an animated cartoon series.
But in the last few years of his life, Adams was more associated with promoting bigotry and conspiracies. In 2023, multiple newspapers pulled the “Dilbert” comic in response to Adams ranting online that Black Americans were a “hate group.” The statement was made during a discussion of an opinion poll where nearly half of Black respondents didn’t agree with the statement “it’s okay to be white,” a phrase popularized in 2017 by online racists.
“Based on the current way things are going, the best advice I would give to white people is to get the hell away from Black people. Just get the fuck away,” Adams said on his YouTube stream. He added, “I don’t think it makes any sense as a white citizen of America to try to help Black citizens anymore.”
“I’m going to back off on being helpful to Black America because it doesn’t seem like it pays off,” Adams concluded.
Newspaper publisher Gannett, publishers of USA Today and many other local papers, noted at the time, “Recent discriminatory comments by the creator, Scott Adams, have influenced our decision to discontinue publishing his comic.”
Years before that, Adams claimed in 2020 that the “Dilbert” cartoon was cancelled by the UPN network because of his race. “I lost my TV show for being white when UPN decided it would focus on an African American audience,” Adams said. In response to the claim, several people noted that “Dilbert” had extremely low ratings and Adams had previously claimed that was the reason for the show’s cancellation—not because of race.
Adams also said in 2022 that he would “self-identify as a Black woman” after President Joe Biden said he would choose a Black woman to be his Supreme Court nominee.
In 2023, Adams upped his conspiracy ante, falsely claiming that people who weren’t vaccinated against COVID-19 “came out the best.”
That same year Adams said the 2017 Unite the Right rally of antisemites in Charlottesville, Virginia, was “an American intel op against Trump, ” a statement of obvious fiction. It was in the wake of that rally that Trump praised neo-Nazis as “very fine people.”
Echoing his effusive praise of deceased racist political activist Charlie Kirk, it makes sense that Trump would see Adams as a “fantastic guy.” Trump and Adams were on the same page, promoting racism and conspiracy. In Adams, Trump clearly sees a like-minded individual.
