In an interview with Vanity Fair in September, South Park
creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone all but swore off satirizing Donald
Trump, with Parker noting, “I don’t know what more we could possibly
say.”
We found out what more they could say on Friday, in brutal fashion. The same day Paramount announced a five-year streaming deal with South Park,
including 50 new episodes, the show’s 27th season premiere mercilessly
mocked both President Trump and the network for capitulating to his
demands, settling with him over the 60 Minutes lawsuit, and canceling The Late Show With Stephen Colbert.
The episode, called “Sermon on the ’Mount,” did not hold back on crass
jokes aimed at Trump, showing him with a “teeny tiny” penis both in
animation and as a deepfake and portraying him as Satan’s lover in a
style reminiscent of the gay Saddam Hussein character from the 1999
movie South Park: Bigger, Longer … Uncut.
The episode aired as Paramount is set to merge with media company
Skydance. Politicians and media personalities alike are speculating that
the company’s eagerness to keep Trump happy is motivated by gaining the
US Federal Communications Commission’s approval of the deal, which was
made official Thursday evening.
Before being fired, Colbert, a
late-night ratings leader, described Paramount’s $16-million settlement
with Trump as a “big fat bribe” and on Monday’s show he said “the gloves
are off” while telling the president “go fuck yourself.” Between
Colbert’s remaining season, network colleague Jon Stewart’s scathing indictment of both Paramount and CBS, the new South Park
deal, and a transformative merger, the company appears to be looking at
a period where some of its biggest stars are openly hostile to both it
and the president.
“I welcome Skydance’s commitment to make significant changes at the once storied CBS
broadcast network,” FCC chairman Brendan Carr—who wrote Project 2025’s
chapter on the telecommunications agency—reportedly said in a statement
Thursday supporting the merger. “Today’s decision also marks another
step forward in the FCC’s efforts to eliminate invidious forms of DEI.”
Paramount did not respond to WIRED’s requests for comment. In a
statement emailed to WIRED, White House spokesperson Taylor Rogers
derided South Park as irrelevant and derided “left” fans who liked the season opener.
“The Left’s hypocrisy truly has no end—for years they have come after South Park for what they labeled as ’offense’ [sic] content, but suddenly they are praising the show. Just like the creators of South Park, the Left has no authentic or original content, which is why their popularity continues to hit record lows,” she wrote.
“This show hasn’t been relevant for over 20 years and is hanging on
by a thread with uninspired ideas in a desperate attempt for attention.
President Trump has delivered on more promises in just six months than
any other president in our country’s history—and no fourth-rate show can
derail President Trump’s hot streak.”
Paramount’s press release announcing the South Park deal—reported to be worth $1.5 billion—describes
the show as “one of the most valuable TV franchises in the world.” It
also praises Parker and Stone as “fearless” and “boundary-pushing.”
But the roasting of Trump in “Sermon on the ’Mount” was also something else: mean. Deeply, devastatingly mean.
After being accused by the Canadian prime minister of being akin to a
“dictator from the Middle East,” Trump lashes out at a White House
artist for painting him with a small penis.
The small dick theme is
repeated throughout the episode, with numerous portraits of him humping
things and animals and Satan telling him, “I can’t even see anything,
it’s so small.”
Trump petulantly threatens to sue him, and the artist,
and Jesus, and the entire town—basically anyone who pisses him off. It’s
also implied that he’s on the Epstein list.
“Do you really want to end up like Colbert?” Jesus asks the
townspeople, who are pushing back against forced Christianity in their
kids’ school. He calls out Paramount by name, saying, “We’re going to
get canceled, you idiots.”
The town strikes a deal with the president, forcing them to do
pro-Trump messaging—a nod to Trump’s claim on Truth Social that
Paramount’s “new owners” have agreed to give him $20 million in
advertising and public service announcements in addition to the
settlement. (Paramount told Deadline
the settlement doesn’t include PSAs and said it “has no knowledge of
any promises or commitments made to President Trump other than those set
forth in the settlement proposed by the mediator and accepted by the
parties.”)
The show is then interrupted by a PSA, where a deepfake Trump
stumbles around naked through the desert; this time, his genitals have a
pair of googly eyes attached. “Trump: His penis is teeny-tiny, but his
love for us is large,” a narrator says. The ad ends with text on a black
backround: “He Gets Us. All Of Us.” “He Gets Us” is also the slogan
used for an actual Christian ad campaign.
You can argue that portraying Trump as a narcissistic man-child and
focusing so heavily on his appearance is lowbrow. But Nick Marx, an
associate professor of film and media studies at Colorado State
University, says it’s also a refreshing change from the defiant
messaging of Colbert and others.
“It’s fucking funny as hell that they seek to sexually humiliate
Trump,” he claims, saying it’s an effective troll of what he believes to
be the president’s “vanity and insecurity.”
“I think that is the card to play … and I am frustrated that more of
the comedians that I love on the left haven't leaned into that really
harsh attack of him.”
Critics of the episode on X issued complaints that “the left took over south park” and “this show is for libtards” while others outright expressed fear that Trump will get the show canceled, saying, “South Park was good while it lasted.”
But making small-dick jokes isn’t woke—it’s exactly that type of
humor, along with an affinity for saying the r-word and racial and
homophobic slurs that helped cultivate South Park’s right-wing audience. Marx thinks that’s a good thing for liberals.
“Right-wing humorists, the Joe Rogans and Andrew Schulzes of the
world, they're the ones occupying this offensive free-speech space. And
so anything that the left can do to reclaim artists like Parker and
Stone would be a benefit to them.”
In a meeting Thursday, the FCC’s Carr said he’s “not a ’South Park’ watcher,” NBC News reports.
He also said Trump is against “a handful of national programmers” who
“control and dictate to the American what the narrative is, what they
can say, what they can think.”
But, while many of his attacks have
focused on news organizations themselves—ABC, CBS, NPR, even The Wall
Street Journal—censoring cherished entertainers could rile up members of
the public who frankly may not care that much about the plight of
journalists.
That’s something that Paramount, too, has to contend with now.
“They just inked this $1.5 billion deal that, to me, is a gesture of
full and unequivocal support from Paramount,” Marx says. “The
syndication and streaming licenses that South Park draws are
worth much, much more than they've been paying Parker and Stone over the
years.” He says he wouldn’t be surprised if Parker and Stone got away
with nothing more than a slap on the wrist.
But, as the episode itself indicated, Trump has been relentless with
his lawsuit targets and openly bragged about getting Colbert fired and
keeping the media in line.
Michael Sozan, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, says he could absolutely see Paramount trying to tone down South Park’s content, considering that the company settled on “the flimsiest of lawsuits,” predicated on the claim that 60 Minutes
edited an interview with Kamala Harris to make it more flattering to
her. But he said doing so could “wake up a sleeping giant”: the public.
The streamer has also promised Trump it will cancel its DEI initiatives.
“A lot of American people are starting to be more and more aware of
how Trump is trying to censor reporters, but now also just entertainment
shows that he disagrees with. That is something that authoritarians
do,” he says. People could respond with outrage or boycotts.
But he cautions that’s not Paramount’s only problem as it clinches the $8 billion Skydance merger.
Already, senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren have written a letter
to Skydance CEO David Ellison seeking answers about the “secret side
deal with President Trump” that allegedly offered him future PSAs. Trump
has called Ellison’s father, Oracle cofounder Larry Ellison, a
“friend.” California officials are also looking into whether the company
engaged in bribery related to the deal, as Semafor reported.
“If there's a Democratic administration and a Democratic Department
of Justice starting three years from now, or Democratic House or Senate,
Paramount also has opened itself up to the possibility of lots of
investigations,” Sozan says.
It’s fascinating that South Park and late-night comics are
issuing some of the harshest rebukes of Trump, though Sozan says
satire—and joy—are considered by scholars to be an effective tool
against authoritarians who “want to keep people depressed and in line.”
He thinks the backlash over Paramount’s mounting controversies could be a genuine “cultural flash point.”
So far, there’s no indication that Paramount plans to censor South Park. Then again, the Skydance merger has only just been greenlit.
At the end of the premiere episode, Cartman and Butters, seemingly
stand-ins for Parker and Stone, try to kill themselves because Cartman
is depressed that “woke is dead” and he has nothing to make fun of
anymore.
“I think I might be going,” Butters says. “Yep, sweet death is about to come. I love you man,” Cartman replies.
For fans of the show—and free speech in general—let’s hope that’s not
true. But just in case, you should probably watch that episode now.
Take 2: Trump White House Rages Over ‘South Park’ Episode
Satan (left) and Donald Trump (right) appear in 'South Park.' (photo: Comedy Central)
Andrew Perez and Asawin Suebsaeng
/
Rolling StoneDonald Trump’s White House is melting down over Wednesday night’s South Park premiere, which just so happened to attack the president’s “teeny tiny” manhood and depict him as literally in bed with the devil, effectively taking over the role held on the show for years by the late genocidal dictator Saddam Hussein.
“The Left’s hypocrisy truly has no end — for years they have come after South Park for what they labeled as ’offense’ [sic] content, but suddenly they are praising the show,” Trump White House spokesperson Taylor Rogers told Rolling Stone in a statement this morning. “Just like the creators of South Park,
the Left has no authentic or original content, which is why their
popularity continues to hit record lows. This show hasn’t been relevant
for over 20 years and is hanging on by a thread with uninspired ideas in
a desperate attempt for attention. President Trump has delivered on
more promises in just six months than any other president in our
country’s history — and no fourth-rate show can derail President Trump’s
hot streak.”
The episode came just hours after it was reported that Paramount had agreed to buy the global streaming rights for South Park in a five-year deal worth $1.5 billion.
The twice-impeached, repeatedly indicted president has for decades
harbored intense, mean-spirited pop-culture fixations, and that
personality trait has not changed six months into his second
administration. It would be easier to shrug off his celebrity obsessions
as mere cattiness, if waging war on late-night television and its corporate owners weren’t an actual facet of his administration’s sprawling project of authoritarianism and fear.
Prior to the White House’s statement, Rolling Stone had asked several Trump advisers if clips of the latest South Park
episode had been circulating among Trump’s staff. One senior
administration official replied, “Of course,” noting how much their
phone had lit up about it. A Trump adviser also said they’d seen it, and
that as a longtime fan of the series, they found it “disappointing.”
Trump recently secured a hefty payout from Paramount to settle his meritless lawsuit against CBS News’ 60 Minutes,
based on his claims that the show selectively edited an interview with
former Vice President Kamala Harris, his 2024 opponent, to “make her
look better.” The agreement is part of a broader pattern of major
corporations settling Trump’s baseless lawsuits, agreeing to shovel
millions of dollars into his presidential library fund to accommodate
the president.
The Paramount settlement comes as the outfit seeks regulatory
approval for its merger with Skydance — and appears to contain more than
just a payout to Trump’s library fund. According to Trump,
the deal includes a $16 million settlement as well as $20 million “from
the new Owners, in Advertising, PSAs, or similar Programming.”
South Park specifically skewered the reported PSA
arrangement on Wednesday. The episode concluded with an AI-generated PSA
showing a fully nude Trump wandering the desert with a “teeny tiny”
penis.
Paramount has faced mounting criticism over its efforts to cozy up to Trump. The executive producer of 60 Minutes quit in April, saying
he was no longer allowed “to make independent decisions” running the
show. The company’s move to part ways with host Stephen Colbert and
permanently end The Late Show has created an uproar, too.
Earlier this week, Colbert responded to a Truth Social post from Trump in which the president said he hoped he was the reason Colbert had been fired.
“Go fuck yourself,” Colbert said.
