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“South Park” creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker told The New York Times in an interview published Saturday that their show isn’t getting more political — even with its latest season repeatedly taking on President Donald Trump.
The two creators said that “South Park” only seems more political because they’re responding to how deeply the Trump administration — and the resistance to it — have infiltrated pop culture.
“It’s not that we got all political. It’s that politics became pop culture,” Parker said.
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The long-running animated comedy has aimed much of its satire at Trump, his Cabinet and his supporters this season.
The show has portrayed the president as Satan’s lover, made Vice President JD Vance into Trump’s diminutive manservant and mocked conservative activist Charlie Kirk’s on-campus organizing — prior to Kirk’s assassination.
It has also depicted Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem as an immigrant abuser who murders innocent dogs — referencing a passage in her memoir describing how she shot a misbehaving puppy on her farm.
The portrayals have drawn direct criticism from the White House. A White House spokesperson told Fox News Digital in July, “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 spokesperson added.
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Despite lampooning Trump and his administration, the two creators maintain they’re politically centrist and are equal-opportunity offenders.
“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,” Parker said.
The reason Trump has become such a focal point, the pair said, is because the administration dominates the media landscape and sets up taboos they feel compelled to challenge.
“Trey and I are attracted to that like flies to honey,” Stone said. “Oh, that’s where the taboo is? Over there? OK, then we’re over there.”
“It’s like the government is just in your face everywhere you look,” Parker noted. “Whether it’s the actual government or whether it is all the podcasters and the TikToks and the YouTubes and all of that, and it’s just all political and political because it’s more than political. It’s pop culture.”
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The two said they never intended to make the season all about the administration, but once they targeted Trump in the first episode, they found that they had hit a “vein of comedy” and ran with it.
“We basically start with a song, and we don’t know where the album’s going to take us,” Parker told The Times.
Stone added that he and Parker have faced no pushback from the show’s co-owner, Paramount Skydance, even though the company’s CEO, David Ellison, is friendly with Trump and the network recently announced the cancellation of Stephen Colbert’s late-night show.
“I know with the Colbert thing and all the Trump stuff, people think certain things, but they’re letting us do whatever we want, to their credit,” Stone said.
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