“South Park” creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone appeared in a short video spot at the 19th Television Academy Honor Awards, which aired on May 20th. In it, they discussed their roles in the world of comedy and explained why they chose President Donald Trump as the main character in the latest season of the iconic animated series.
“For 30 years, there’s always been a group trying to tell us what we can and can’t say,” Parker said. “And that group has changed. That group was liberal. That group was Republican. We always knew that our job was to be the Joker. We need that. We need people who just make fun of things. It’s great to be able to be. And unfortunately, now we have a president who thinks his job is to be the Joker.”
Stone then said, “So we went into the (27th and 28th seasons) and we actually started having Trump and Jesus and talking about Christian nationalism and all that stuff, because we had to let people know, for better or for worse, like it or not. It was like, this is who we are, you know? Nobody’s going to tell us[what to do].”
After a two-year hiatus, “South Park” exploded onto the air in July 2025 with one of the most overtly politically charged seasons in its history. In the season 27 premiere, Trump was introduced as the main antagonist and shown in bed with his lover and baby daddy, Satan. The episode ended with a PSA featuring a deepfake naked Trump wandering through the desert. Its cover bore the slogan, “Trump: His penis is so small, but his love for us is so big.”
In an interview with The New York Times, Parker explained that he added Trump to “South Park” not because it “got political,” but because “politics has become pop culture.”
“It’s like everywhere you look there’s government in front of you,” Parker said. “Whether it’s the actual government or podcasters and TikTok and YouTube and everything else, it’s all political and only political, because it’s more than politics. It’s pop culture.”
