Donald Trump is known for speaking out against television shows, films, and media figures that he doesn’t agree with, but he hasn’t been quite as vocal when it comes to South Park. Earlier installments of the show used Mr. Garrison as a Trump stand-in during his first term as President of the United States, but Season 27 and Season 28 have much more openly mocked the politician and members of his current administration, as well as the widespread social impact the MAGA movement has had on the country.
South Park co-creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone even crafted shocking — and often graphic — storylines that involved Trump being in a romantic relationship with Satan, who later becomes pregnant with his child. While the White House did release a statement in July calling the show “fourth-rate” and irrelevant “for over 20 years,” per Variety, there seems to have been significantly less backlash towards the hit Comedy Central series than there has been against late-night talk show hosts who have routinely criticized Trump and his policies, such as Seth Meyers, Stephen Colbert, and Jimmy Kimmel — and comedian Patton Oswalt thinks that he knows why.
“Nothing shuts Trump up like money,” Oswalt suggested during an appearance on The Daily’s Beast‘s The Last Laugh podcast. “He can argue that Stephen Colbert isn’t getting the ratings and isn’t making the money, even though the show is brilliant. But it’s not that Stephen Colbert is slipping in the ratings, it’s that the whole infrastructure of late-night television is slipping … [with] South Park, not only does it make insane amount of some money, it gets insane ratings.”
“Trump can only be so angry at that, because what Trump ultimately will respect, even if it doesn’t respect him, is something where the numbers are through the roof, and the money is through the roof. He can’t look at ‘South Park’ and see how brilliant it is, and he can’t look at something like John Oliver and see how equally brilliant it is. All he can think of in terms of, look at this guy’s numbers, look at their numbers, and that’s the only way he sees the world.”
South Park Creators Reveal Why They Poke Fun at Trump Administration
South Park has a long history of satirizing politicians on both sides of the aisle, from former president Barack Obama to major Republican figures like Mitch McConnell and Mike Pence. According to the show’s co-creators, the second Trump administration is no different. They are simply continuing their tradition of putting taboo topics on display for laughs.
In an interview with the New York Times, Parker explained that it wasn’t that they had become “all political,” but that politics had gradually become a key part of “pop culture” in recent years.
“We’re just very down-the-middle guys. Any extremists of any kind, we make fun of. We did it for years with the woke thing. That was hilarious to us. And this is hilarious to us.”
- Release Date
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August 13, 1997
- Network
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Comedy Central
- Directors
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Adrien Beard
- Writers
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David A. Goodman, Nancy M. Pimental, Kenny Hotz, Philip Stark, Dave Weasel, Dan Sterling, Susan Hurwitz Arneson, Trisha Nixon, David R. Goodman, Tim Talbott, Pam Brady, Robert Lopez, Dani Michaeli, Kyle McCulloch, Karey Dornetto, Jonathan Kimmel, Jane Bussmann
