NEED TO KNOW
South Park kicked off its 27th season on Wednesday, July 23, by lobbing some major shots at President Donald Trump and its own parent network, Paramount.
Co-creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker said in a September 2024 interview that they wanted to move away from satirizing Trump on the show, but during their season premiere they did exactly the opposite, mocking the president’s Epstein list scandal, his MAGA following, Paramount’s recent 60 Minutes lawsuit and the president’s penchant for suing those who stand up to him.
Some of the episode’s most shocking moments included a cartoon depiction of Trump stripping naked and crawling into bed with his lover, Satan. The hulking red demon, who is routinely depicted on South Park as a sensitive soul, compares Trump multiple times to a “guy he used to date,” which devoted viewers know is none other than Saddam Hussein.
Comedy Central
And the show’s mockery of Trump doesn’t stop with the devil scene. At the episode’s end, the town of South Park finds itself in debt to Trump — thanks to yet another of the president’s lawsuits — with one resident suggesting that they can “just cut some funding for our schools and hospitals and roads” to pull together enough cash for the payout.
An attorney character explains that in addition to owing Trump $3.5 million, part of their settlement agreement demands that the townspeople create a pro-Trump PSA.
In a spoof of the “He Gets Us” religious ad campaign, the town’s snarky PSA features a hyperrealistic deepfake of Trump stumbling through the desert while a man’s voice compares him to Jesus. The president, exhausted, strips off his clothes in the AI-generated video until he falls down, totally nude.
The fake video of Trump then shows him lying on the ground and looking down toward his legs, as a penis rises into frame and says in a high-pitched voice: “I’m Donald J. Trump and I endorse this message.”
The deepfake PSA ends with a voiceover that says, “His penis is teeny tiny, but his love for us is large.”
Elsewhere in the episode, a fake news broadcast mocked Trump’s recent legal victory over 60 Minutes and its parent company Paramount, which he sued over their interview with his 2024 presidential opponent, Kamala Harris. On July 2, after months of back and forth, Paramount agreed to pay $16 million to Trump’s future presidential library.
On the South Park version of the news magazine show, the anchors nervously stumbled over saying anything about Trump, “who we know is probably watching.”
“We are just reporting on this town in Colorado that’s being sued by the president and is fighting back,” the anchors protested. “And just to be clear, we don’t agree with them!”
The episode is controversial on its own, but the behind-the-scenes details add another layer to Stone and Parker’s decision to take on the president in such a graphic manner. Earlier this week, the duo signed a five-year deal with Paramount worth a whopping $1.5 billion to bring South Park’s exclusive streaming rights to Paramount+.
Paramount, in addition to owning Comedy Central, is also the parent company of CBS, and thus, 60 Minutes. So, just days after settling a multi-million dollar lawsuit with the president, and coughing up over a billion dollars to get South Park on their streaming service, the media conglomerate finds itself in the middle of a high-priced firestorm.
Never miss a story — sign up for PEOPLE’s free daily newsletter to stay up-to-date on the best of what PEOPLE has to offer.
Trump has yet to comment on the episode; however, it proves that Stone and Parker have found the inspiration they said they were lacking when they promised not to satirize Trump anymore in their 27th season.
“Obviously, it’s f—— important, but it kind of takes over everything and we just have less fun.” Parker told Vanity Fair about spoofing Trump in the September 2024 interview. “I don’t know what more we could possibly say about Trump.”
PEOPLE reached out to Paramount for comment about South Park’s controversial premiere.
