'South Park' Continues to Eviscerate Trump

Despite ongoing talk of censorship, South Park remains as bold as ever

Comedy Central

With news of a merger between Paramount and Skydance, the future of South Park has been thrown into a state of uncertainty. Falling under the same parent company as Stephen Colbert, many have speculated that it could succumb to a similar fate and be discontinued completely.

What few anticipated was that the season 27 premiere would be one of the most singularly provocative episodes that the nearly three-decade-old cartoon has aired to date. It took aim not only at the very company it had just renewed its 5-year streaming contract with, but also at the United States’ presidential administration — leveling an attack even more blistering than the ones that led to Colbert's discontinuation. (CBS maintains that the late-night host’s cancellation was apolitical, but the timing of the move casts serious doubt on their denial.)

As a lifelong fan of South Park, there’s a “home team” sort of pride that comes with those moments when the show becomes embedded in our cultural narrative. Despite its enduring tenure on TV, it’s seldom given the credit it deserves. But as outlets across the board reacted to the season premiere, from The New York Times and The Atlantic to Facebook, Twitter, and TikTok, long-time South Park aficionados like myself were able to delight in watching the world rally behind the subversive cartoon.

For me, among the most telling displays of the show’s cultural impact are the repeated footnotes it’s earned in the “Letters from an American” daily newsletter. In them, author and historian Heather Cox Richardson archives the most important historical events taking place in our country. For some, her words serve as a ledger — the best insight we have today into the events that history books will recount tomorrow.

Now, feathering her talks about tariffs, policy, and the pandemonium of this administration are updates about this developing season of South Park and its reception. Like many others, she’s deemed the moment too significant to ignore.

It’s no surprise that the premiere was hailed by so many as a cultural event akin to a comedic moon landing. It served as a rare source of unity between foul-mouthed adolescents, noodle-rationing college students, and future-of-Medicare-fearing grandparents. Even my 73-year-old father implored our extended family to sit down and revel in Matt Stone and Trey Parker’s act of political defiance. (They were happy to oblige him in his uncharacteristic request.)

One of the most recurrent questions people have asked since the season aired is how the show could be allowed to get away with such excoriating commentary. By all appearances, it spits in the face of the contract its showrunners just signed with Paramount, and threatens to embroil the streaming giant in the same controversy that it just went to such self-abasing lengths to avoid.

I think Paramount’s reasoning may just be as simple as, “all press is good press.” They’re wagering that South Park will be such a hit with fans in the years to come that it’s worth fielding the risk of any future jabs at the network, or further legal disputes with this presidential administration.

Paramount CEO David Ellison addressed the issue indirectly this month, clarifying that he’d been a South Park fan for years. “Matt [Stone] and Trey [Parker] are incredibly talented,” he told CNN. “They are equal opportunity offenders and always have been.”

Following furtherlive speculation that the show would face censorship after that scabrous premiere, episode 2, titled “Got a Nut,” has assuaged all doubts. It continues depicting a small-genitalia-boasting Trump fuming around his gaudy estates and ruled by the erratic whims of a Middle Eastern dictator. In addition to showing him in an ongoing romantic relationship with the devil, this episode envisioned JD Vance as a muttering, sycophantic dwarf that Trump bullies and kicks around, as well as a Botox-addled, canine-massacring Kristi Noem.

The episode also put ICE and the podcast sphere in its crosshairs, framing Eric Cartman as Charlie Kirk with a comical haircut to match, and the school counselor as an inept new Immigration Enforcement officer in desperate need of a paycheck. Along with a group of weapons-clad amateurs, he barges into a live Dora the Explorer show in a scattershot attempt to detain anyone with insufficiently fair skin.

Not every joke lands with quite the punch it did in the premiere. But for anyone fearing that South Park might do an outrageous thing like censor themselves, it’s becoming clear that they’ve got something else coming entirely. There’s no hot-button issue the show has been unwilling to tackle and beat to a pulp thus far, whether religion and the afterlife, or terrorism, political tribalism, and school shootings. The indefatigable satire has never held back its commentary before, and it shows no signs of hesitation as it weighs the perilous road ahead.

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