It may be hard for many, given our collective issue remembering anything that happened in politics more than six months ago, but recall the unprecedentedly bleak vibe shift that rattled the nation across the first half of 2025. Dark days for millions of Americans began Jan. 20 with Donald Trump’s return to the Oval Office. An inauguration featuring a Nazi salute from the world’s wealthiest man gave way to the signing of a staggering number of sweeping executive orders that rescinded many of the previous administration’s actions and zeroed in on vulnerable members of the working class. Over the subsequent weeks, news of Trump testing his power with the courts and for vendetta fulfillment became quotidian; by June, the chilling effects of the sacking of those who dared question or cross our fairly elected president brought about an unheard-of level of silence from the chattering class.
Where could one turn in this moment while so unnerved by all of it? Certainly not the newly neutered Democrats, merely staring at their shoes amid the chaos, then only in its dawn. The collective silence was perhaps just as much of a shock as it was catching clips of the waves of ICE raids in our cities, or the graphic images of abuse from El Salvador’s CECOT prison, or, really, seeing how quickly so many fell in line with Trump in his second coming, gripped with fear of his power and rolling over as he collected settlements from nuisance lawsuits against major media outlets. How could the pushback be so weak, the decision to just look away for four more years so widespread? Who will be a patriot in this moment and say something?
Trey Parker and Matt Stone have indicated that, as this all was unfolding, they may have gotten to the task a bit sooner had their post-Skydance-Paramount merger $1.5 billion 50-episode deal with Paramount closed sooner; it was held up by the corporate sale, the blessing for which, incidentally, was his to rescind. Post-corporate deal, it was in late July when they brought South Park, their beloved, decades-running hit animated series, back to Comedy Central after a two-year hiatus. With the return of their show and the confidence that likely comes when you’ve been buoyed up to the billionaire class, Parker and Stone brought an agenda to rip Trump, his deeply inexperienced cabinet heads and the culture he’s created in America, new assholes.
Trump was a topic the show refused to address directly during his first term, instead opting to use a longtime character as a stand-in for the president in his first term; he was already an unparodiable parody of himself, the creators’ logic seemed to indicate when they were questioned about that decision. But this go-around and their fast and wild success at the task led to an absolute roasting of the administration and the show delivering a send-up of Trump that’s disgustingly crass, precisely on-point, and sidesplittingly funny over the two back-to-back seasons; the second season’s conclusion on Wednesday night with perhaps a series-best episode that has left most everyone barking on the internet satisfied is another commendable feat. But it’s the longtime comedy writing pals’ show of bravery, reemerging at this dark moment that had become far too silent as the fear of what wrath Trump may bring spread, that should be considered a true act of patriotism; they shook out of that fear and told us the emperor had no clothes.
Parker and Stone have indicated that it was this fear of Trump’s wrath that lit a fire under the two longtime friends and creative partners, who brought their crass animated short about four mountain town pals and their gross adventures to Comedy Central in the mid-1990s and managed to ink an initial deal. As season 27 rolled out fortnightly and chilling effects shot through multiple media tentacles after the Sept. 10 killing of political pundit Charlie Kirk, the South Park guys seemed to be undeterred — even as late-night host Jimmy Kimmel was taken off the air for a mention of Kirk and the GOP.
“Trey and I are attracted to that like flies to honey,” Stone told The New York Times in a rare interview in November. “Oh, that’s where the taboo is? Over there? OK, then we’re over there.”
They didn’t start the season 27-28 run with even a lick of subtlety — in fact, some of the moments in the July 26 season 27 premiere episode were the most raucous aired in years. By the end of the premiere’s first act, we’d been introduced to the flapping-head, cut-out South Park version of President Donald Trump and have learned that, like Saddam Hussein in the show’s heyday and 1999 feature-length treasure, South Park: Bigger, Longer and Uncut, the president is in a sexual relationship with the ever-insecure and unlucky-in-love prince of darkness, Satan. By the end of the episode, Trump has sued the town of South Park and then, in a moment that quickly rippled across the web, a PSA featuring a real-life Trump lookalike collapses naked in the desert and looks on at his small, talking penis.
The second episode, featuring the animated versions of a dog-massacring Kristi Noem, the secretary of Homeland Security as well as Kirk, weeks before he was shot to death at a speaking event, received a second angry and condescending condemnation from the White House, which had claimed the show “hasn’t been relevant for over 20 years and is hanging on by a thread.” Trump, however, remained silent on his new South Park portrayal and has yet to say a word; speculation has centered on his penchant for only fighting winning battles and possibly his respect for billionaires.
As the weeks went on (and the produced-on-the-fly show began to air fortnightly, leaving more time than us), the Trump character’s antics grew increasingly selfish and reckless, even vindictive, as he attempted to abort his and Satan’s love child or otherwise plot the unborn hellspawn’s death. The show cycled through current trends (the Labubu craze and tween 6,7 fad provided memorable arcs) in the titular town’s plotlines, but the action here had little forward momentum or change that didn’t reset by Wednesday’s final scene. The remainder of the season brought in and roundly mocked several new faces in the Trump administration; Pam Bondi’s devotion to Trump earned her a recurring and hard-to-remove shit stain on her nose, and Secretary of War Pete Hegseth got an official theme song set to the tune of ”Highway to the Danger Zone”(Pete Hegseth/is a fucking douche).
The gamble Paramount, Parker and Stone took — which wasn’t much of a risk to the comic duo, at least, as they seem to truly be fearless regarding Trump — paid off in ratings that smashed prior records for the show. The season 27 premiere episode in July 2025 garnered nearly 6 million cross-platform viewers, marking the show’s biggest linear premiere rating since 1999. The second episode of that season grew even further to 6.2 million viewers.
On Wednesday, season 28 concluded the Trump-Satan “romance” plotline in a clever feat that combined pitch-dark humor, pathos, some South Park canon nostalgia, a happy ending and a Jeffrey Epstein gag. While the wave of Trump administration bashing has concluded for the time being, the Teflon Don character, like one of South Park’s four child heroes, also gets a classic sitcom reset once his plot concludes. Perhaps Trump will be back on the show in the next season — or maybe the tension that led the show’s masterminds to bring the president onto the show has now been removed from the air. For now, we can hopefully have a laugh at, and maybe even with, a sharp parody of our elected officials. And we actually have a couple of billionaires to thank for it.
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