The White House issued an urgent statement last week. It wasn't about the war in Gaza or Ukraine, nor the opioid epidemic in the US or the passage of the new budget, but about a cartoon television series.
"South Park has been irrelevant for more than 20 years, and it's barely surviving, dragging along with uninspired ideas in a desperate attempt to get attention," said Taylor Rogers, a White House spokeswoman, in response to the broadcast of the premiere episode of South Park's 27th season.
The claim that the series is barely surviving couldn't have come at a more ironic time, just three days after South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone signed a new $1.5 billion streaming deal with Paramount Plus. This deal is in addition to the massive $900 million deal the two signed in 2001. The new deal not only made them both billionaires (worth an estimated $1.3 billion each) but also made them the highest-paid showrunners in Hollywood.
To understand the trolling, you have to go back to when the first episode of South Park aired in March 2023.
There were all kinds of long special episodes in between, but it's been more than two years since Parker and Stone returned to doing what they do best: responding in real time in 22-minute episodes to what's happening in the world, using four fifth-grade children.
And if you somehow missed what happened in this episode, which so annoyed the White House, here's what happened in it (warning: spoilers): The series introduced Donald Trump's character on the series for the first time - who has been portrayed so far by Mr. Garrison - with a voiceover identical to the one Saddam Hussein had at the time.
Similar to the way the Iraqi dictator was presented in the series, Trump is also shown with real pictures of himself (and not cartoons), and just like in the case of Saddam, Trump is also in a sexual relationship with the devil.
In one scene, Trump gets into bed naked, exposes his tiny penis, and begs for sex. The devil looks at him and says that he can't see anything because he's small. If this sounds like a far-fetched plot line, you've probably never seen South Park before, a series that featured Steven Spielberg raping Harrison Ford, and Britney Spears appearing headless.
In any case, the show saved the highlight for the end of the episode, with a "support ad" for Trump (the first of 50, supposedly, as many as their new contract allows). The ad is a new peak in South Park's abuse of the celebrity, presenting Trump not as a cartoon caricature, but as a hyper-realistic deepfake.
In the commercial, we see Donald Trump himself walking in the desert, undressing, lying on the sand naked, and then his small penis sticks out and says to the camera: "I am Donald J. Trump and I endorse this message." In the background, the announcer summarizes the commercial: "His penis may be tiny, but his love for America is huge."
Paramount attempted to stop the writers from airing the scene. Trey Parker told a panel at Comic-Con that they received feedback from the producers about the scene: "They said to us, 'Okay, we'll air it, but we'll blur the penis,' and I said to them, 'No, you're not going to blur the penis.'"
Matt Stone added that to avoid censorship, they simply added eyes to Penis, to make him a stand-alone character. "Once we put eyes on him, you couldn't blur him. It became a four-day conversation between adults about a penis. With eyes."
Just last September, Stone and Parker were interviewed by Vanity Fair magazine, explaining that they had no intention of addressing Donald Trump anymore.
"Obviously, it's f***ing important," Stone explained, "but it kind of takes over everything, and then it's less fun for us." Parker added: "I don't know what else you can say about Trump."
The two explained that they had asked to postpone the series' return after the US elections because they no longer had the strength to satirize Trump. That's what happens when reality surpasses all imagination.
Ten months later, and the two who vowed not to mess with Trump anymore are doing exactly the opposite. The entire episode is a response to the huge settlement between Paramount and US President Donald Trump - a deal that shocked the American media world and raised serious questions about the ethical boundaries of media corporations. According to reports, CBS (part of the Paramount Group) paid President Trump $16 million as part of a legal settlement, following his lawsuit over an old interview on the "60 Minutes" program that he claimed was biased.
The real storm erupted after Trump himself made it clear on his Truth Social that as part of the agreement, he was also promised a personal advertising campaign worth $20 million - a move that many saw as a corporate bribe to maintain his relations with the media. Within the same week, Paramount announced the cancellation of Stephen Colbert's "The Late Show" - ostensibly for budgetary reasons.
Paramount Global's deal with South Park
Paramount Global has extended its partnership with "South Park" creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone for another five years.
Under the new deal, Paramount will pay South Park Digital Studios, co-owned by the media giant and Park County, more than $1.25 billion, ranking it among the richest deals in television history, according to an LA Times report from Tuesday.
The announcement follows the season 27 premiere of the long-running animated series on Comedy Central.
Under the agreement, Paramount will air 50 new episodes across five seasons. The episodes will debut on Comedy Central before streaming on Paramount+ the following day.
All 26 previous seasons will also be available on Paramount+, which regained international streaming rights after a period of contractual disputes.
The deal concludes protracted negotiations between Paramount and the show's creators, who previously sued incoming Paramount President Jeff Shell, accusing him of interference with rival negotiations involving Warner Bros Discovery and Netflix.
Talks were further complicated by the Skydance leadership, which is in the process of acquiring Paramount, reportedly objecting to earlier proposed terms valued at $3 billion over a ten-year period.
"South Park" debuted on Comedy Central, a network owned by Paramount, in August 1997.