South Park returns from brink of death with jaw-dropping dunks on President Trump

For a second there, it looked like South Park may never return. But now the show is back and waging its most direct assault on a public figure since Saddam Hussein was hooking up with Satan.

Just a few weeks ago, creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone said season 27 was poised to premiere, but that incoming leadership at Paramount was jerking them around in anticipation of an acquisition deal awaiting FCC approval. Marred by politics and blowing up in public, the dealmaking was exacerbated by a decision by CBS, a subsidiary of Paramount, to cancel Stephen Colbert’s The Late Show over vague capitulation to the lawsuit-slinging President Donald Trump. A few blowback cycles later, the South Park ultimately went through — to the tune of $1.5 billion. A far cry from premature death.

South Park season 27 finally premiered on Comedy Central on Wednesday night, then popping up to stream on Paramount Plus afterward, right on cue. And it returned with fangs intact. If there was any doubt in fans’ minds that Stone and Parker would save Paramount a headache by bending the knee to Trump, the notorious pranksters assuaged them. It’s hard to even call the 22-minute “Sermon on the ’Mount” satire — South Park, especially over the last decade, has never been subtle, but the premiere is more like a Death Star laser blast aimed at Washington D.C. Parker and Stone plunge the town of South Park directly into the muck of the moment, and savagely depict the sitting president as a yapping dictator with loud bark and a small penis. It was quite possibly the most visible genitalia ever depicted on network TV, all to call out President Trump as a destroyer of “woke.”

“Sermon on the ’Mount” is a smorgasbord of material yanked from the headlines. Cartman is Parker and Stone’s way in, per usualy, bemoaning the loss of NPR (a punching bag) and the liberal use of the r-word in everyday speak. “Woke is dead,” Cartman declares. “Everyone hates the Jews. Everyone is fine with using gay slurs. It’s terrible. Because… I don’t know what I’m supposed to do.”

Cartman’s awakening to the un-awokening coincides with South Park Elementary’s principal, PC Principal, pivoting to a new moniker: Preach Christ Principal. PC Principal is so convinced the only path forward for America is Christian enlightenment that he even invites Jesus Christ to preach in school. Even the MAGA voters of South Park are confused, and find themselves with the same revelations as Cartman. They don’t understand why Trump took everything away.

South Park went toe-to-toe with Trump during the Republican’s first presidency, though parodied his actions through a stand-in: Mr. Garrison, the longtime elementary school teacher who rose to power after a Trump-like makeover. In “Sermon on the ’Mount,” the South Park mob storms Garrison’s home looking for answers on why the world they knew has been desensitized, but Garrison isn’t the president in this universe now. It’s actually Trump. The real guy. And when Parker and Stone cut to White House to introduce him, he’s rendered exactly how they treated Saddam back in the 2000s. Also sporting an extremely visible micropenis.

But even for all the targeted attacks on Trump’s character, the roads of “Sermon on the ’Mount” lead back to Paramount. Parker and Stone find room to rib the company for paying the president over a “deceptive” 60 Minutes report, while the citizens of South Park back out of their own protests after Trump hits them with their own lawsuit. The episode ends with Jesus Christ himself begging the citizens of South Park to get over their grievances and take his bread — a sign that they’re back in line under Trump. “Do guys really want to wind up like Colbert?” the lord tells his people. “Just shut up or we’re going to get canceled!”

I am sure Parker and Stone got the same memo. They’re just not heeding the call. Instead, they took the money and ran… back on the air.

As part of South Park’s settlement with the enraged president, the town agrees to run pro-Trump propaganda — a sequence Parker and Stone have depicted with live-action. Ish. Thanks to the magic of transparent AI (the video title itself notes it “contains synthetic media”) South Park’s “ad” depicts Trump marching through the desert, shouldering mankind’s sins, stripping down naked, then collapsing on to the ground. His penis again enters the picture, to proclaim “I’m Donald J. Trump and I endorse this message.” The goof arrives one day after Trump announced the U.S. AI action plan and an order “preventing woke AI in the federal government.”

And with that, South Park has entered Trump’s AI era. And Trump has entered the South Park ring.