After years of steering away from Donald Trump, “South Park” creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone are lastly tackling the previous, and present, U.S. president head-on. Whereas “South Park” has by no means shied away from controversy, the present’s creators had lengthy resisted immediately parodying Trump, as an alternative utilizing the character Mr. Garrison as a symbolic stand-in all through the mid-2010s. However as Trump’s affect, and the general public’s obsession with him, grew, Parker and Stone determined the cultural second demanded one thing bolder. In response to Nielsen knowledge, their gamble paid off. Comedy Central’s “South Park” viewership has reportedly doubled in comparison with 2023, proving that political satire nonetheless attracts an viewers when carried out their approach.

In a brand new interview with The New York Occasions, the comedic masterminds behind the long-running Comedy Central hit defined why they determined to pivot their satire towards Trump after avoiding him for almost a decade. “It’s not that we bought all political,” Parker stated. “It’s that politics grew to become popular culture.”

For Stone, the shift wasn’t simply inventive, however it was instinctual. “There was a little bit of a taboo in needling the president,” he stated, referring to ongoing hypothesis that Trump had used his political energy to retaliate in opposition to leisure figures like Stephen Colbert and Jimmy Kimmel.

“Trey and I are interested in that like flies to honey,” Stone continued. “Oh, that’s the place the taboo is? Over there? OK, then we’re over there.” The duo, who lately inked a brand new take care of Paramount, stated the renewed inventive freedom gave them room to “present our independence someway.”

What began as a one-off gag shortly was one in all “South Park”’s most talked-about story arcs. Parker revealed that Trump was solely supposed to look in a single episode, however the response from followers and the writers’ personal curiosity led them to develop it right into a serialized storyline spanning a number of seasons.

The primary episode to characteristic Trump, titled “Sermon on the ’Mount,” aired on July 23, 2025, and instantly made waves for its over-the-top depiction of the president in mattress with Devil. The episode didn’t cease there, skewering Trump’s authorized troubles, his cupboard, and even Paramount’s personal authorized settlement with him.

Since then, Trump has continued to play a central position all through Season 27 and into the newly launched Season 28, cementing “South Park”’s newest inventive period as one in all its most controversial and commercially profitable but.

Not everyone seems to be laughing at “South Park”’s newest political pivot, least of all of the White Home. Following the present’s season premiere, a White Home spokesperson slammed the long-running Comedy Central sequence in a press release to Fox Information Digital. “This present hasn’t been related for over 20 years and is hanging on by a thread with uninspired concepts in a determined try for consideration,” the spokesperson stated, dismissing the satirical storyline as “fourth-rate.”

“President Trump has delivered on extra guarantees in simply six months than another president in our nation’s historical past, and no fourth-rate present can derail President Trump’s sizzling streak,” the assertion continued.

Regardless of the fiery response, creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone insist their method isn’t partisan, however it’s comedic. “We’re simply very down-the-middle guys,” Parker defined. “Any extremists of any form, we make enjoyable of. We did it for years with the woke factor. That was hilarious to us. And that is hilarious to us.”

The episode mocked every thing from Kirk’s supply to his bodily mannerisms, together with a now-viral scene exhibiting Cartman ranting about abortion whereas sitting on a bathroom, earlier than storming a school rally, Bible in hand, as a self-declared “grasp debater.” However after Kirk’s assassination earlier this 12 months, the present’s creators, Trey Parker and Matt Stone, quietly made the choice to step again from the storyline.