Is 'South Park' Trump-Proof?

Cannonball with Wesley Morris

The New York Times

News Commentary, Society & Culture, News, Arts

4.8 • 9.2K Ratings

🗓️ 25 September 2025

⏱️ 50 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

This season, “South Park” is taking on the Trump administration the only way it knows how: with stop-motion, expletives and jokes about the size of the president’s penis. But how is the show getting away with it? Wesley Morris and the comedian Wyatt Cenac discuss the special sauce that is allowing "South Park" creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone to survive the political pressure that’s come for their comedy peers. At least for now.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Okay, ready?
0:01.2	Ravel.
0:02.4	Quiet.
0:03.5	Yes.
0:03.9	Behave.
0:04.7	All right.
0:10.0	I'm Wesley Morris, and this is Cannonball.
0:16.2	This week.
0:17.6	Oh, my God.
0:18.5	They canceled Jimmy.
0:24.1	Comedy. week. Oh my God, they canceled Jimmy. Comedy is in a pickle right now. It's a pickle that's as old as comedy itself. I mean,
0:30.7	how do you make fun of, say, a king who could also cut off your head? It used to be that in a
0:36.2	monarchy, there was one exception made for the
0:39.6	jester. But no such exception seems to exist right now. I had been thinking about this before ABC
0:47.8	via Disney briefly suspended production on the Jimmy Kimmel show. He's back now. But before that, Stephen Colbert's show was canceled and is still canceled by CBS.
0:57.9	You can come to your own conclusions about why Stephen Colbert lost his show.
1:02.3	But in comedy, right now, doing the job can cost you your job.
1:08.8	With one notable exception, the jesters over at South Park.
1:16.2	This latest season kicked off with the show's creators, Trey Parker and Matt Stone
1:20.6	practically begging for the guillotine.
1:23.2	The very first episode gave us a President Trump with a tiny penis and the town of South Park
1:27.9	itself facing a lawsuit from this fictional Trump.
	...

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