South Park’ Finds New Relevance Skewering the Trump Era
After the White House attacked the season premiere for lampooning the president, some of the Trump allies who were mocked in the second episode tried to show they could take a joke.
When the new season of “South Park” premiered last month with a scene showing President Trump in bed with Satan discussing Jeffrey Epstein, the White House attacked the series as a “fourth-rate show” and said that it “hasn’t been relevant for over 20 years.”
But the episode drew strong ratings, and when the series returned on Wednesday night some of the Trump administration officials and allies who were skewered — including Vice President JD Vance — took a different tack, and tried to show they could take a joke.
“Well, I’ve finally made it,” Mr. Vance wrote on social media as he reposted a scene from the show that imagined Mar-a-Lago as “Fantasy Island” and the vice president as Tattoo, the short sidekick who was played in the original series by the actor Hervé Villechaize.
Not all of the officials who were roasted laughed it off. Kristi Noem, the Homeland Security secretary, was portrayed in the episode as a serial dog shooter who was obsessed with her appearance. (The real Ms. Noem wrote in her memoir about shooting her dog.)
Speaking on the “The Glenn Beck Program” on Thursday, Noem said it was “lazy” to make fun of women for how they look. “Only the liberals and the extremists do that,” she said. “If they wanted to criticize my job, go ahead and do that. But clearly they can’t. They just pick something petty like that.”
In the episode, “Got a Nut,” Mr. Mackey, a school counselor, loses his job because of budget cuts and takes a position with Immigration and Customs Enforcement. He accompanies ICE on raids of a “Dora the Explorer Live!” show and of heaven, where he is told to round up only brown angels.
“South Park,” which has routinely roasted political figures with satire and dark comedy since its debut in 1997, has regained momentum as its tart observations of the second Trump administration are commanding attention and breaking through online.
Before the episode aired, the Department of Homeland Security’s account on X shared a screenshot from a “South Park” trailer showing masked ICE agents — and added a link to its recruitment website.
The “South Park” social media account responded, “Wait, so we ARE relevant?” and added a ribald hashtag.
The second episode also briefly portrays Charlie Kirk, the founder and chief of the pro-Trump, youth-focused Turning Point USA. The real Mr. Kirk embraced the parody and approvingly shared several clips on his social media accounts, including a segment where Cartman fiercely debates “woke liberal students.”
“Not bad, Cartman,” he wrote on X, where he changed his avatar to an image of Cartman sporting a Kirk-like haircut.
THE NEW YORK TIMES
posted by Ricky at 17:59
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