South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone have explained why they didn’t directly parody President Donald Trump in the latest season of the show.

While the long-running cartoon extensively satirised the US Presidential Election during its twentieth season – which ended on December 7 in the US – the show did not directly depict its eventual winner. While Hillary Clinton was accurately portrayed in the show, the role of Trump went to South Park character Mr. Garrison – who morphed into an appearance that bore a striking resemblance to Trump as the season progressed.


Parker and Stone have expounded further on why the show didn’t directly parody Trump, with the pair – who also created the hit musical The Book of Mormon and the comedy puppet-film Team America – admitting that the real-life chain of events that saw Trump assume office in November was actually “funnier” than anything they could have dreamed up in the writing room.

“It’s tricky now because satire has sort of become reality – it’s really hard to make fun of!” Parker told ABC in Australia. “We were really trying to make fun of what was going on in the last season of South Park, but we couldn’t keep up. What was actually happening was much funnier than anything we could come up with. So we decided to kind of back off and let them do their comedy and we’ll do ours.”

Parker further clarified that they didn’t directly parody Trump in season 20 as they didn’t want to “service” the President as a character on the show.

“We were like, fuck him, we don’t want to give him the satisfaction.”