Just a fortnight after the White House formally declared that South Park was a desperate, irrelevant, and “fourth-rate” comedy show, President Donald “Saddam Hussein” Trump’s personal enforcers are commencing a recruitment drive solely based on a South Park preview.
On July 23rd, Season 27 of South Park premiered belatedly with a scorching critique of the President and their superiors at Paramount who recently empowered Trump to use baseless lawsuits to stifle critics and extort payments. Despite South Park’s previous approach of mocking both sides of political issues equally, “Sermon on the ‘Mount” stood out as one of the sharpest and most direct criticisms of the Trump administration in comedy history, with series creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone expressing their sentiments towards America’s own diminutive Middle-Eastern dictator unequivocally — although Paramount restricted them.
The upcoming episode of South Park seems set to take on the U.S. Immigration and Customs Agency, which President Hussein recently injected $170 billion of taxpayer funds into as part of his plan to inflate the national deficit by trillions. While the Season 27 premiere hinted that Parker and Stone’s satire of ICE might be as harmless as one of the agency’s child detention centers, the official Twitter account of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security appears to have changed course regarding efforts to depict South Park as culturally irrelevant, now embracing the parody with dark humor by using an image from a South Park promotion to promote an ICE recruitment link.
Upon release of the aforementioned promotion, Charlie Kirk, co-founder of Turning Point USA and college dropout, interpreted Cartman impersonating him in the new South Park episode as a compliment despite being unaware of how strongly South Park will come at him.
As ICE mimics the demagogue by using screenshots from an unreleased South Park episode to pretend they are in on the joke, it’s evident that far-right leaders have devised a new approach for dealing with South Park Season 27. Instead of lashing out and labeling Parker and Stone as biased individuals, which would inadvertently give substantial publicity to South Park as it shatters streaming records, the Right has reverted to their Joining the Panderverse era strategy where they pretended South Park was aligned with their views, implying any teasing is done out of affection and patriotism.
While this PR tactic is more promising than their previous reaction two weeks ago, it might still prove ineffective in deflecting criticism since certain aspects of South Park’s critique hold significant importance for their voter base.
One top reply to Homeland Security’s tweet exclaims, “FUCK ICE WHERE ARE THE FUCKING EPSTEIN FILES?” Trump and his allies will struggle to hide behind animated characters when lingering questions about his actions with real individuals remain unanswered.