South Park goes after Donald Trump again, as well as top ally Kristi Noem, in the second episode of its new season
The long-running program, known for both its vulgarity and a willingness to skewer pretty much anyone, began its newest season with a wildly provocative episode last month.
Mr Trump was portrayed as an echo of the show's Saddam Hussein character, with a high-pitched voice, thin skin, tiny genitalia, and a tendency to threaten lawsuits against anyone who noticed said smallness.
Oh, and he was dating Satan, who in South Park's universe is actually quite a nice guy, with the unfortunate habit of falling for toxic boyfriends.
This all sounds mad if you have never seen the show, I'm aware. It's probably still mad if you have seen it. But having just signed a new deal with Paramount, worth well over a billion dollars, creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone appear to be cutting even looser than usual.
Today's second episode shifted its focus to two targets: Mr Trump's crackdown on immigrants, and the increasing influence of right-wing media grifters like Charlie Kirk, who was singled out for particular scorn.
Mr Kirk is a co-founder of Turning Point USA, an organisation which seeks to spread conservative views among young people. He's also a podcaster. And like a great many podcasters, he is the sort of obnoxious human being South Park delights in mocking.
The episode showed one of the students of South Park Elementary School, Clyde Donovan, cashing in on modern outrage culture as a 'master debater'. I presume I don't need to explain the pun there. And it showed the school's beloved resident psychopath, Eric Cartman, raging at Clyde for stealing his 'shtick'.
One scene, as an example: Clyde sets up a booth at school and broadcasts an event called 'Watch as Clyde Donovan totally destroys these woke liberal students'.
'Looks like a lot of whiny babies have a problem with what I say, so ... prove me wrong,' the child says.
'You said nothing good ever came of the Jews, but if that's true, why are the bagels so yummy?' another character, the perpetually innocent Butters, asks him.
'Well you've obviously been taught by the Jews to have a problem with this school and with America, so let me ask you this: what is your definition of a woman?' Clyde shoots back.
Cartman eventually usurps the scene.
That's the B-plot.
The A-plot involves school counsellor Mr Mackey losing his job, and in his desperation to pay his bills, taking a new one with America's immigration enforcement agency, ICE.
He's immediately assigned to raid a Dora the Explorer concert under the leadership of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, whose face keeps drooping and falling off in a rather cruel dig at her volume of plastic surgery.
She also keeps shooting dogs, perceiving them as threats – maybe doming half a dozen throughout the episode – in a reference to the time the real Ms Noem shot her family's dog in a gravel pit after she grew tired of its behaviour.
Mr Mackey is also involved in a subsequent raid on heaven, where the ICE agents explicitly target 'brown' angels.
Ms Noem is so impressed by Mr Mackey's performance that she commends him to Mr Trump, who invites him to his Florida resort, Mar-a-Lago.
The President and Vice President J.D. Vance are portrayed as parodies of characters from the television series Fantasy Island, wearing white suits. I know nothing of that series, and cannot offer any pithy remarks as a result.
I would offer you an image from the moment when Mr Vance, who is miniature sized, offers to ... ahem ... prepare Satan for sex with Mr Trump. But the President's little cartoon genitals are out at that point. So never mind.
Anyway, Mr Mackey gets freaked out and starts opening random rooms in Mar-a-Lago. In one, he finds an old man being massaged by young-looking girls – a reference to the Jeffrey Epstein case that probably obliges me to say that there's no evidence Mr Trump was ever aware of, let alone involved in, Epstein's crimes.
A second room shows the recently detained Dora the Explorer doing a massage.
And a third reveals Clyde, who has been rewarded for his 'master debating' but feels rather bad about it. He and Mr Mackey share a moment of mutual empathy.
Perhaps not an obviously outrageous ending, on par with the first episode's. But enough to build anticipation for the next one, you daresay.
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Kennedy Jr. would be running the Department of Health and Human Services, I would have said that it's a comedy skit on Saturday Night Live. And I wouldn't have believed you. Authoritarian leaders don't like experts. Experts are the people who say, look, you can yell at me and threaten me all day long, but, you know, water is still wet and the sky is still blue. And, you know, people are going to die because of this. I mean, there is going to be real harm to the health and well-being of a lot of Americans because of this kookery that's infested the government now. And again, firing all those civil servants, firing all those government scientists and replacing them with people who want, you know, jobs and nice offices is an important step in that. Sam Hawley: Yeah. And not only sacking people, Tom, I also read that he's trying to change history, rewriting historical documents. Tom Nichols: Well, he was very upset that the Smithsonian Institution had an exhibit about impeachment that included him. And that was taken out. Now, apparently, because of the outcry around that, that he is going to be put back in there, whether he likes it or not, which tells you that if people get angry enough and they make enough noise that, you know, you can have some effect here. Yeah, Trump simply reorders reality whenever he speaks to his liking. And again, he may well know, I mean, at this point, it's so difficult to know what Trump believes and what he imagines or what he confabulates. But he knows that he's speaking to his loyal base. And that base right now is pretty angry with him about the whole Jeffrey Epstein business, which is a whole other drama here in America. So he's trying to throw them all kinds of red meat as fast as he can to try and get their minds off the fact that he didn't fulfill his promise to release all these files about one of his best friends. Sam Hawley: All right, well, Tom, Donald Trump, he's restructuring the bureaucracy to suit his view of the world. Project 2025 was, in essence, a wish list of ways to expand presidential power, if you like. So is that happening in your view? Is Trump becoming more powerful? Tom Nichols: It's hard to say. The best barometer of whether the Republicans and Donald Trump are stronger or weaker is this obvious panic that has overtaken them about losing the House next year. Is he personally more powerful? I don't think so. I think he was probably at the height of his power when he came into office and in those first few months. But there have been so many screw ups and misfires and stumbles that I think, you know, if there was any kind of second term honeymoon, he's mostly squandered that away. And so I think he's still the president of the United States and he is still a force to be reckoned with. But I don't think he's looking quite as powerful as he was even, you know, two or three months ago. Which is not to underestimate him. Because he will do things that other presidents would not. Strangely enough, this Epstein business is the thing that's probably hurt him more than anything. I think he's really worried about his base turning on him. And the only time they've even threatened to turn on him has been over this Epstein business. Sam Hawley: Yeah, interesting. All right. Well, the concern for a long time, of course, has been that Trump will chip away at democracy and democratic norms over his four year term, which is rather long. How much damage could he actually do in that time? Tom Nichols: Oh, he's not chipping away at it. He's jackhammering away at it. The chipping away was in his first term, but that was held in check by people around him who would say things like, Mr. President, you can't do that. Or even more importantly, they would say, Mr. President, I'm not doing that. He learned from that. He has come into office with a bunch of careerists and opportunists and sycophants who are going to do whatever he tells them to do. He's calling for an investigation, for example, into Jack Smith, the special counsel who was looking into his various misdeeds in his first term. And the lawyer who will be the head of that office is a 30 year old guy who got his law degree last year. And he'll do whatever Trump wants him to do. Sam Hawley: Well, Tom, I don't want to be overdramatic, but could he actually succeed then in destroying or at least deeply wounding American democracy? Tom Nichols: Destroying, probably not. One of the strengths of the United States is that we are a sprawling, vast federal system. Donald Trump can say a lot of things, but, you know, New York and California and Illinois and Massachusetts all have their own governors and legislatures. What he can do is encourage the collapse of democracy in pockets. It's one thing to live in Boston. It's another thing to live in Alabama or Louisiana or Mississippi or Texas, where the governor and the legislature are straight up aligned with the president and have decided that if he doesn't like the way the Constitution is written, then they don't like it either. And so I've said in the past, I don't think American democracy collapses from coast to coast. I think it evaporates in pockets. That's where I think the real threats are going to come, is in this kind of cooperation with individual states and governors and legislatures. Sam Hawley: Tom Nichols is a staff writer at The Atlantic. This episode was produced by Sydney Pead. Audio production by Sam Dunn. Our supervising producer is David Coady. I'm Sam Hawley. ABC News Daily will be back again on Monday. Thanks for listening.
