Inside disgraced Dilbert creator Scott Adams’ biggest controversies following death at 68

Scott Adams, who created the comic strip Dilbert, has died at the age of 68. But the designer has been at the center of various controversies, including one which ended his comic strip in 2023.

The creator of the Dilbert comic strip has died at the age of 68.

It was announced on Tuesday (January 13) that Scott Adams had died after being diagnosed with prostate cancer. His ex-wife, Shelly Miles, confirmed the news of his death during a January 13 episode of her Coffee with Scott Adams livestream.

In May 2025, Adams announced that he was suffering from prostate cancer, which had spread to his bones. Later that year, he posted on X, formerly known as Twitter, that there was “basically no” chance he would recover from the illness. He made a public appeal to Donald Trump, declaring in a message: “I am rapidly declining. I will ask President Trump if he can get the Kaiser of Northern California to respond and schedule this for Monday.

“It will give me a chance to stay on this planet a little longer. It’s not a cure, but it works for a lot of people,” he added, after Trump was called “pathetic” by Fox News viewers after an “embarrassing” interview.

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It’s unclear whether Trump did anything or not, but the president responded to Adams on X with two simple words: “On that.”

Adams was a controversial figure before his death, with one of his biggest controversies leading to the cancellation of his comic strip which poked fun at everyday corporate life. But before Dilbert was canceled after three decades, the cartoonist was part of many controversies. Here we look at a few:

Racist remarks

In February 2023, Adams hosted a YouTube live stream titled “Episode 2027 Scott Adams: AI Goes Woke, I Accidentally Joined A Hate Group, Trump, Policing Schools” on his channel. During the video, he made a racist rant, urging white people to “get away from black people” and calling black people a “hate group.”

Adams said he previously identified as black, despite being a white man, because he “likes[s] to be part of the winning team,” but cited a conservative-leaning poll that allegedly showed that wasn’t true.

“I’m going to stop helping black America because it doesn’t seem to be paying off,” he added.

After his racist comments, distributors of the Dilbert comic strip, including the Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times, announced that they would no longer print the comic strip.

“Woke” culture and homophobia

This was not the first time Adams’s strip was published in newspapers. In 2022, the San Francisco Chronicle and 76 other newspapers dropped Dilbert after the comic strip’s first black character was introduced.

Although it sounds progressive, the character was created “apparently to mock ‘woke’ culture and the LGBTQ community,” according to Chris Quinn, editor of The Plain Dealer in Cleveland, Ohio. The character identified as white and as a member of the LGBTQ+ community in order to “shake up” corporate diversity rules.

COVID-19 vaccinations

In another of his YouTube live streams, Adams claimed that people who were not vaccinated against COVID-19 were better off than those who were.

“The anti-vaxxers are the clear winners at this point, and I think it will probably stay that way,” he said.

Holocaust allegations

Adams wrote on his website in 2006 that he questioned how the Holocaust death toll was determined. In the same message in which he declared not to have voted because he considered himself “too ignorant” to do so, he wondered: “I would also like to know how the total of 6 million deaths due to the Holocaust was determined.

“Or is it like all the other LRNs (large round numbers) that someone pulled out of their ass and became true through repetition?” he continued, later adding, “Without that context, I don’t know if I should lump people who think the Holocaust might have been exaggerated for political purposes with Holocaust deniers.” If they’re also crazy, I’d like to know.

Comments on the mass shooting

After a mass shooting in Highland Park, Illinois, that killed seven people and injured three dozen, Adams made a controversial comment.

He tweeted: “When a young man (say, aged 14-19) poses a danger to himself and others, society gives the family who supports him two options. 1. Watch people die. 2. Kill your own son. Those are your only options.”

He later added: “If one more person hallucinates me about a ‘program’ in which teenagers are kidnapped, ‘fixed’ and returned to their happy parents, I might explode.” Nothing like this exists. You have two options. Only two. No help comes. Only death and suffering.