Usually south park’s relevancy feels very fake and surface level to me, but it’s really something how trump and his base are actually, visibly much more enraged by this than they’ve been about any other criticism, any other show, any other enemy I’ve seen in the entire near-decade of his political career. Fucking South Park got to them more than the combined effort of a million other comedians, journalists, parodies, academic criticisms or protest efforts. Like it’s BAD. Like they want the creators in prison and want to consider this a hate crime.
What they actually do in this episode that has magas losing their shit, besides Trump dating Satan:
-The same voice and even distinct music they used for Saddam Hussein 26 years ago is used for Trump, with Satan complaining that Trump is exactly like his ex.
-Trump is depicted threatening to sue an artist for not painting him with a bigger penis than he actually has.
-The media is depicted as spinelessly holding back their true feelings about Trump to avoid getting sued.
-A B-plot has Cartman wanting to kill himself because he no longer feels “special” in an America that has become more hateful than he is.
-Jesus Christ is depicted as having also been silenced by a Trump lawsuit and lives in fear of saying anything bad about Trump out loud.
-Epstein is brought up of course.
-The episode ends airing a convincing AI deepfake of Trump stripping naked as he wanders through a desert, then his tiny floppy penis sprouts cartoon eyes and says “I’m Donald Trump and I approved this message.” This is the part magas believe should count as an actual felony crime, and funny enough also comes right after Trump gave a rambling speech endorsing AI and an executive order to protect it from liability.
It’s only been a day or two, and is now the first time in history that the white house is officially arguing with a tv show.
Not paying that much attention to the world of television and celebrities I did not know the broader context that Trump had sued Paramount over 60 Minutes, Paramount paid Trump a 16 million dollar settlement, and then it cancelled Stephen Colbert’s tonight show out of fear.
But that this all happened around the same time they had just purchased the rights to South Park for 1.5 billion (BILLION.) dollars.
So this is matt stone and trey parker daring both trump and their own network to shut them down after the latter invested a hundred times as much money in South Park as Trump originally shook them down for.
The order was for 50 whole episodes, and they labeled the Trump Deepfake as 1/50. We’ll see if they actually keep going with this and keep escalating it, which in my opinion would be the morally right thing to do. Trump would have to choose between enduring mockery he demonstrably can’t take and proving all their mockery more and more correct, while Paramount has to choose between enduring whatever punishment a raging manbaby POTUS brings down on them or proving how spineless they are AND losing a 1.5 billion investment. All after they cowered before Trump over a relatively measly few million.
It's such a lame "satire," complete drivel, and now it's taking up air that much more important attacks on the WH enjoyed. I genuinely believe the WH is centering South Park not because it feels threatened but because it knows that this vacuous culture war pablum is much less of a concern than Epstein or Gaza or the BBB or anything else.
Not a great strategy if the thing they're centering is also focusing on Epstein.
Honestly, is the Epstein case really an existential threat to Trump's clique? I feel like Americans, by and large, already accepted that they were ruled by pedophiles (at some vibes level) years ago. I think the spectacle this year has always been about the potential to turn it into an unstoppable media scandal based on any substantial evidence.
A lot of chuds are mad about it and it's contributing a lot towards the growing rift between right-wing influencers. There's the group that's directly on US government payroll (Ben Shapiro, Benny Johnson, Charlie Kirk etc) and there's the group of grifters who are noticing the discontent in Trump's base (Tucker Carlson, Candace Owens etc.).
Is the Epstein case an existential threat that can end the Trump administration? Probably not, but it's another crack in the foundation. And Trump certainly feels threatened by it.