South Park has kicked off its 27th season with a blistering episode taking aim at Donald Trump and its newly minted parent company, Paramount, just one day after signing a $1.5bn deal with the network.
The premiere episode, “Sermon on the Mount,” sees Trump in bed with series regular Satan and covers topics including Trump’s lawsuit against Paramount, the cancellation of The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, wokeness, Trump’s attacks on Canada and more.
Unlike other characters, Trump is depicted as an actual photo of the US president on an animated body. There is also an extended scene featuring a hyper-realistic, deepfake video of Trump, completely naked, walking in a desert. There are repeated suggestions that Trump’s genitalia is small.
The episode centers on the presence of Jesus in South Park’s schools, a story covered by a parody of 60 Minutes, in a clear satire of Paramount’s recent embroilment with Trump over the flagship CBS News show. The two hosts refer nervously to “the president, who is a great man” and who “is probably watching”.
When South Park’s parents protest to Trump that they don’t want Jesus in schools, and Trump threatens to sue them for $5bn, Jesus begs them to settle with the president. “I didn’t want to come back and be in the school, but I had to because it was part of a lawsuit and the agreement with Paramount,” Jesus says through gritted teeth.
“You guys saw what happened to CBS? Well, guess who owns CBS? Paramount. You really want to end up like Colbert? You guys got to stop being stupid… He also has the power to sue and take bribes and he can do anything to anyone. It’s the fucking president, dude… South Park is over.”
The townspeople eventually agree to pay Trump a much smaller $3.5m, but also must create “pro-Trump messaging” – leading to the aforementioned video of Trump wandering in a desert, stripping naked.
On Wednesday, the companies South Park Digital Studios and Park County, which are run by South Park’s creators, Matt Stone and Trey Parker, announced a licensing deal with Paramount Global. The $1.5bn (£1.1bn) agreement confirms 50 new episodes on Comedy Central over five years, to exclusively stream on Paramount+ worldwide. The entire South Park library will also be made available on Paramount+ in the US.
Dylan Byers, a senior correspondent at the media organization Puck, wrote on social media after the episode’s release: “Hard to think of anything more defiant in media & entertainment recently than Trey Parker & Matt Stone going scorched earth on Paramount in a South Park season premiere on the heels of netting a $1.5 billion deal with the very same company.”
This deal also comes after recent contentious disputes involving Paramount. Skydance, which is controlled by the son of Trump ally Larry Ellison, is vying to take over Paramount Global, as well as Park Country. (Early this month Parker and Stone criticised the merger for postponing the season 27 premiere, writing: “This merger is a shitshow and it’s fucking up South Park. We are at the studio working on new episodes, and we hope the fans get to see them somehow.”)
The merger, however, requires the approval from the Trump-controlled Federal Communications Commission. When Paramount controversially settled a lawsuit with Trump for $16m over allegations that CBS News, which is owned by Paramount, committed “election interference” in its editing of a 60 Minutes interview with Kamala Harris, some critics alleged another example of capitulation by media companies hoping to curry favor with the US president.
Then three days after Colbert, a high-profile critic of Trump, branded the deal “a big fat bribe” on his late-night CBS show, Paramount and CBS announced it had cancelled the show.
The South Park premiere alludes constantly to the events, with Cartman learning that his favorite radio show on NPR – where “liberals bitch and whine about stuff” – has been cancelled by Trump. “The government can’t cancel the show. I mean, what show are they going to cancel next?” he says.
Trump’s character is also asked directly by Satan about the the “Epstein list”, referring to the unreleased files held by the US government relating to the convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein, who was friends with Trump for 15 years. A political firestorm has erupted since the Trump administration’s recent decision not to release any more documents.
Satan asks Trump directly if it’s on the Epstein list. “It’s weird that whenever it comes up, you just tell everyone to relax,” Satan says.
The Guardian has contacted the Stone, Parker and the White House for comment.