The Dictatorship
‘South Park’ didn’t just skewer Trump — it exposed the weakness of MAGA edgelords
On Wednesday, hours after Trey Parker and Matt Stone signed a $1.5 billion, 50-episode deal with Paramount, the 27th season premiere of “South Park” aired on Comedy Central. Like most episodes of “South Park,” it featured a heavy dose of naughty words that my editor probably won’t let me write without using asterisks. Unlike most episodes of “South Park,” this one elicited an official condemnation from the White House:
“The Left’s hypocrisy truly has no end — for years they have come after ‘South Park’ for what they labeled as ‘offense’ [sic] content, but suddenly they are praising the show. Just like the creators of South Park, the Left has no authentic or original content, which is why their popularity continues to hit record lows.” The statement went on to declare the show “fourth rate” and “irrelevant.”
Trey and Matt must be absolutely delighted.
It seems the billion-dollar nose-tweakers behind “South Park” have the president pegged; after writing the odious, bigoted, cowardly Eric Cartman character for almost 30 years, they know the psyche of MAGA world better than just about anyone. They must have hoped that Trump would not be able to resist responding to jokes making fun of the size of his penis.
It’s clear that it’s the MAGA-fied edgelords in the audience who should, like Cartman, feel useless.
In the opening moments of the episode, titled “Sermon on the ’Mount,” Stan, Kyle, Kenny and Cartman notice that things have changed in South Park. Cartman, who has always been a selfish and cruel loudmouth, is dismayed when his supply of schadenfreude is cut off with the cancellation of NPR, which Cartman describes as “the funniest show ever where all the lesbians and Jews complain about stuff.”
The strangeness continues at a school assembly, when the boys find that PC Principal — who for the last several seasons has strutted around in wraparound shades enforcing a rigid liberal orthodoxy — has gone full youth pastor, declaring himself Power Christian Principal and inviting Jesus Christ himself to South Park Elementary.
Cartman spirals further when he discovers at school that none of his edgelord histrionics elicit a reaction from people like they used to. He’s no longer the only one openly hating Jewish people or using gay slurs — being a bigot in the open is acceptable now. “Woke is dead,” he laments to his friend and frequent target of abuse, Leopold “Butters” Stotch. He adds, “I used to laugh, Butters. I used to have fun. But I’m not special anymore. So what’s the point of me even existing?”
As the people of South Park grumble about the changes in their town and the intrusion of Jesus in their public school, they watch a news report explaining why this is all happening: President Donald Trump threatens to sue anybody who doesn’t do what he says.
At the show’s midpoint, Trump makes his “South Park” debut. (In previous seasons, the teacher Mr. Garrison played a sort of Donald Trump-like role.) Longtime fans of the show may recognize Trump’s voice and animation style; he sounds exactly the same as the character of Saddam Hussein from early seasons and the 1999 film “South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut.” Also like the Hussein of old-school “South Park,” Trump is depicted with a photorealistic head that flaps open and closed when he speaks, affixed to a crudely animated body made of cutout rectangles. Like the character of Hussein, “South Park’s” Trump is also in a sexual relationship with Satan, who complains that Trump reminds him of one of his exes. (It’s pretty clear where this subplot is eventually headed.)
But unlike with Hussein’s character, we see in multiple scenes that Trump, along with an obsession with his virility, has a micropenis.
Jesus later admits to the people of South Park that the reason he’s at the school is because Paramount made a deal with Trump and he’s forced to be there to avoid more litigation, echoing Paramount and other institutions’ capitulation to threats from the administration. The episode concludes with the townsfolk settling a threatened lawsuit from the president by agreeing to pay him millions of dollars and create pro-Trump content.
What follows is a live-action public service announcement featuring a deepfake of a fat and out-of-breath Donald Trump stumbling through the desert and removing his clothing until he’s naked but for his shoes and socks. A little penis with googly eyes peeks up over the president’s heaving belly and chirps, “I’m Donald Trump and I approve this message!”
Trump’s baby penis and gay relationship with Satan seems to have grabbed the most headlines, but the true insult to South Park’s MAGA fans came in Cartman’s arc. Cartman, realizing that his entire personality was based on triggering liberals and mocking wokeness, finds that his knee-jerk contrarianism is no longer interesting. Without purpose, he decides to kill himself and Butters. (He does this by trying to asphyxiate them both using Butters’ parents’ car, which turns out to be electric and thus an ineffective suicide tool.)
Cartman spirals further when he discovers at school that none of his edgelord histrionics elicit a reaction from people like they used to.
If operating under the shallow assumption that “South Park” is a show that exists to mock woke culture, Cartman’s despair could be seen as a meta-commentary on the program itself, which in the past has frequently satirized liberals by poking fun at activism in favor of trans women in sports, inclusive Hollywood casting, the #MeToo movement and performative antiracism. But with Cartman’s existential crisis happening as the show fires on all cylinders at a new target, it’s clear that it’s the MAGA-fied edgelords in the audience who should, like Cartman, feel useless.
Like Cartman, MAGA media figures who have built their entire careers painting themselves as aggrieved and silenced victims of a cultural “left” must grapple with who they are now. They are the dog that caught the car.
“South Park” is once again making clear that the show’s humor was never about agreeing with its creators (or anyone) ideologically; it was about exposing phoniness, satirizing moral rigidity, poking fun at bullies and mocking unquestioned power. Trump demanded unquestioned power; he got it. MAGA fell in line. Institutions are falling in line. Now it’s their turn to be mocked.
On Thursday at San Diego ComicCon, Parker and Stone were asked to respond to the White House’s condemnation of the episode. “We’re terribly sorry,” Parker deadpanned.
Erin Gloria Ryan
Erin Ryan is a writer and podcaster. She’s the creator, co-host and executive producer of Crooked Media’s “Hysteria” podcast and a frequent contributor to other Crooked Media podcasts and video series. She’s written for “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia,” The Daily Beast, Jezebel and other TV shows and publications.
FORT WORTH, Texas (AP) — Eight protesters accused by the Justice Department of having ties to antifawere sentenced Tuesday to decades in federal prison over a shooting outside a Texas immigration detention center that wounded a police officer. Prosecutors have called the shooting an act of terrorism.
One of the defendants, a former U.S. Marine Corps reservist convicted of opening fire during the July 4 demonstration outside the Prairieland Detention Center near Dallas, was sentenced to 100 years in prison, the maximum punishment.
The lengthy sentences were condemned by family members and supporters in a news conference outside the federal courthouse in Fort Worth. Hope Song, whose son Benjamin Songreceived the heftiest sentence, disputed prosecutors’ claims that her son shot the officer and said he didn’t intend to hurt anyone.
U.S. District Judge Reed O’Connor, one of two judges overseeing the proceedings, said what happened wasn’t a protest but “an assault on democracy.”
“The need to deter this type of conduct is high,” O’Connor said.
The seven other protesters received prison terms ranging from 30 to 70 years.
Prosecutors said the eight are members of antifa, a decentralized anti-fascist organization and a targetof the Trump administration. Antifa is not a single organization but rather an umbrella term for far-left militant groups that confront or resist neo-Nazis and white supremacists at demonstrations.
President Donald Trump last fall signed an executive order designating antifa a domestic terrorist organization, even though there is no domestic equivalent to the State Department’s list of foreign terror organizations.
The defendants deny any affiliation with antifa and maintain they attended the demonstration in support of detained immigrants.
Prosecutor Frank Gatto urged the judge to impose stiff penalties.
“People with that kind of extremist beliefs need extra time in prison,” Gatto said. “They believe violence is justified.”
Phillip Hayes, Song’s attorney, said outside the courthouse that he takes issue with the idea that the protesters are extremists.
“This is a bunch of kids and young adults who really have a really big heart and really wanted their voice to be heard,” Hayes said. “It was never intended that anybody get hurt. It was never intended that any shots would be fired.”
Prosecutors said in court that Song had yelled “get to the rifles” and opened fire, striking a police officer who had just pulled up to the center.
Hayes argued that Song’s shots were “suppressive fire” and that a ricochet bullet hit the officer after he arrived on the scene and “aggressively” pulled out his firearm. He said his client will appeal the 100-year sentence.
“Song, aside from this day, has had an impeccable life. A former Marine. A good student,” Hayes said. “He had a lot of good qualities that were just ignored. The judge went ahead and gave as much as he could.”
Other defendants and their family members pleaded for leniency in court.
Autumn Hill said the gathering “seemed more like a party to me than anything else” and that she and others who participated “didn’t expect or want any violence or destruction of property to occur.”
Amber Lowrey told the judge that her sister, Savanna Batten, is a compassionate person with dreams of opening a bakery. She said Batten’s activism started with animal rights and evolved into anti-war and human rights advocacy.
“She’s the best person I know,” Lowrey said.
Hill and Batten both received 50-year sentences.
Other defendants previously pleaded guilty to providing material support to terrorists rather than take their case to trial.
Critics warn the case could have a wide-reaching impact on protests given that organizations operating within the U.S. are supposed to be protected by First Amendment free-speech rights.
Last week, federal prosecutors charged 15 peoplewith impeding the Trump administration’s immigration crackdownin Minnesota. They claimed the demonstrators were members of antifa who conspired against the federal government to block arrests and deportations by setting up blockades around government buildings and throwing chunks of ice at federal vehicles, among other actions.
The Dictatorship
Tulsi Gabbard and Senate GOP face difficult new questions over influence of her ‘guru’
About a month into Donald Trump’s second term, Senate Republicans weighed whether to confirm one of the president’s worst nominees. Indeed, the list of reasons to reject Tulsi Gabbard’s nomination for director of national intelligence was not short.
The former congresswoman lacked the requisite experience in intelligence matters. She had an indefensible habit of echoing Russian propaganda. She struggled to explain her record of defending Bashar al-Assad’s Syrian regime. Senators heard from former national security officials who issued unsubtle warnings about elevating Gabbard to an important and influential position.
But in case that weren’t quite enough, let’s also not overlook the fact that Gabbard was a member of a secretive Hare Krishna offshoot religious sect that is considered by many of its former members to be an abusive cult.
Gabbard, who wrapped up her tenure as DNI last week, has long insisted that any suggestion that she was somehow enthralled to or controlled by this sect or its leader, whom she has referred to as her “guru,” is just bigotry against her faith.
But it’s against this backdrop that The Washington Post obtained hundreds of secret memos prepared for Gabbard during her congressional tenure, which were put together by members of the alleged cult and which included thousands of pages of specific directives to her on policy and politics.
After careful analysis of thousands of these documents, which have not been independently verified by MS NOW, the Post determined that they likely came from Gabbard’s secretive guru, a man named Chris Butler.
The memos, starting in 2013, when the Hawaiian first arrived on Capitol Hill, reflect a dynamic in which Gabbard didn’t just take direction from the materials, but essentially took dictation from the alleged cult leader: Memos told Gabbard what she should do as a member of Congress, and she often did exactly that, sometimes word for word.
The Post’s Jon Swaine spent months trying to get Gabbard to respond to questions, but to no avail. Her spokeswoman reportedly encouraged Swaine to drop the story, saying, “I cannot imagine WaPo’s readers would be interested in yet another uncredible, bigoted attack on the DNI’s faith.”
On May 20, Swaine nevertheless alerted the DNI and top members of her staff to the fact that the Post was prepared to publish his reporting anyway on her association with Butler.
On May 22, Fox News reported that Gabbard was leaving the administration, ostensibly because of a health issue involving her husband.
This week, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer spoke on the Senate floor and commented on the reporting:
There are reports that Tulsi Gabbard was receiving instructions from a so-called guru and repeating them word for word. That ought to concern all of us if it’s true. No one knows who this guru really is, what his connections are, and where the instructions came from. … We need answers.
The New York Democrat’s comments made sense, though it’s worth considering who, exactly, “we need answers” from.
It stands to reason, for example, that Gabbard has some explaining to do, but I’m also interested in the answers from those who elevated her to an influential intelligence office in the first place.
In February 2025, confronted with an avalanche of reasons to reject Gabbard’s nomination, 52 Senate Republicans — every GOP member except Kentucky’s Mitch McConnell — shrugged off every red flag and voted to confirm her as the nation’s DNI, including so-called “moderates” such as Maine’s Susan Collins and Alaska’s Lisa Murkowski.
The question for these 52 senators seems obvious: Do you regret that confirmation vote and now recognize it as a mistake? Or do you still think it was a good idea to put Gabbard in this influential intelligence position?
Steve Benen is a producer for “The Rachel Maddow Show,” the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He’s also the bestselling author of “Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans’ War on the Recent Past.”
In the lead-up to the Iran war, President Donald Trump dismissed the possibility that Tehran would close the Strait of Hormuz despite warnings from his top military adviser, authors of a new book told MS NOW’s Lawrence O’Donnell on Monday.
In their first televised interview about “Regime Change: Inside the Imperial Presidency of Donald Trump,” New York Times reporters Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan said Trump also disregarded warnings from Gen. Dan Caine, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, about the potential effects on American weaponry and about casualties.
The initial closure of the strait, a narrow passageway through which a fifth of the world’s oil passes, led to a spike in gas and oil prices. According to Swan, Trump thought Iran would have limited time to take action because the war would be over quickly — a claim he has made repeatedly during the nearly four-month-long war.
“He felt that this regime was a paper tiger, that this was going to be a fast war,” Swan said on “The Last Word.” “He just said he felt that that was going to be the case, that they were going to collapse very quickly.”
“It’s a form of magical thinking, actually, is what it all boils down to,” he added.
The revelation is just one of several in the book — which is based on more than 1,000 interviews — that illustrate how Trump repeatedly bases geopolitical decisions on his own whims rather than experts’ assessments.
Another example of such thinking was when Trump floated a plan to expel 2 million Palestinians from Gaza so he could turn it into the “Riviera of the Middle East.” Haberman and Swan wrote in the book that one senior aide characterized the idea as “legitimately nutso … but very on-brand.”
Haberman also spoke about “how scared” people were inside the White House ahead of last year’s so-called Liberation Daywhen Trump unveiled sweeping global tariffs. (The Supreme Court struck down those tariffs in February.)
“They were scared at how close the bond markets came to just completely melting down seven days later, which was finally what got him [Trump] off of it, but again, it was the willingness to just go straight to the brink” that was jarring, Haberman said.
Despite such fear among Trump’s staff, Haberman added, the White House makes up “a group of people who genuinely want to see him succeed.”
Julianne McShane is a breaking news reporter for MS NOW who also covers the politics of abortion and reproductive rights. You can send her tips from a non-work device on Signal at jmcshane.19 or follow her on X or Bluesky.
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