Trump law firm says 'Bloom County' cease-and-desist letter is fake

Much has been written about Donald Trump's thin skin, but a whole new chapter emerged Thursday when Bloom County cartoonist Berkeley Breathed posted what he said was a lawyer's cease-and-desist letter ordering him to stop using the president and his family in promos for merchandise related to the comic strip.

The notion of the president of the United States suing over a comic strip starring an overly sensitive talking penguin and a strung-out, diaper-clad cat whose vocabulary consists only of "ack!" and "pfft!" had Bloom County fans sharpening their claws.

Wait up. There's just one problem: On Friday, Emily M. Thall, the director of business and marketing for Kasowitz Benson Torres LLP, told USA TODAY  the letter, which has been shared 29,000 times, is "a hoax."

In the correspondence posted on Breathed's Facebook page, Kasowitz allegedly demanded that the cartoonist "immediately remove all such promotional imagery featuring your products 'Photoshopped' below the rights-protected visages of my client and his family."

Twice in the last month, Breathed posted digitally-altered photos promoting Bloom County merchandise. One features Trump riding on a horse behind Russian President Vladimir Putin and another with Foreign Minister Serey Lavrov and Ambassador Sergey Kislyak in the Oval Office. All of them are wearing T-shirts featuring the characters Opus, Bill the Cat and Steve Dallas.

In an email to the Associated Press, Breathed noted Trump's extensive history of litigation and said it was "futile" to argue "back and forth" over the truth.

The cartoonist also posted his written response to Kasowitz, in which he told the president's lawyer not to bother filing injunctions because he would not "be using either him or anyone in his family for promotional purposes again. Ever."

Don't worry: Given that Trump is a public figure, he's still fair game for the comic strip itself, which has been making fun of him since the 1980s. In addition to more recent plots about the Trump campaign and presidency, Breathed also once came up with a storyline in which Bill the Cat got a brain transplant from the bigly-talking businessman.

Breathed couldn't resist getting in one last dig before ending his letter, though.

"As a gesture, I wonder if we might send Melania a plush Opus," he wrote in the letter. "This way, she'll be able to cuddle with TWO stuffed pudgies."

Ouch. After Pope Francis joked with the first lady about the president's eating habits, that one's probably not going to go over well.

Contributing: The Associated Press