It’s hard to believe that South Park turns 30 next year, having run through 28 seasons — with a 29th incoming — since Comedy Central debuted “Cartman Gets an Anal Probe” 30 years ago this week in 1997. Everyone knows the show’s core characters — 10-year-old best friends Stan Marsh, Kyle Broflovski, Eric Cartman, and Kenny McCormick — but key to the show’s success is its seemingly endless capacity to satirize the zeitgeist.

Since it began, South Park has been a regular fixture at the Emmys, racking up 20 nominations and including five wins. This year, when one might expect its creators to be running out of ideas, the show received a record three Emmy nominations, one in the traditional Outstanding Animated Program slot, one for Outstanding Character Voice-Over Performance, and one for Outstanding Original Music and Lyrics (the jaw-dropping “Christian Woman,” a white-trash holiday anthem whose singer gives a special shout-out to “my big fake tits and my Botox lips”).

South Park has always been famous for its willingness to provoke — as evidenced by the episode titled “Osama Bin Laden Has Farty Pants”, which aired just over two months after 9/11 — but 2025’s Seasons 27 and 28 were arguably their most inflammatory yet. As Paramount changed ownership, costing Stephen Colbert his job and almost doing the same to Jimmy Kimmel, South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone threw caution to the wind with a sustained assault on Donald Trump’s presidency.

Though largely acclaimed, this new direction brought criticism from long-term fans, who didn’t care much for this new “political” direction. This confused Parker in particular — “It’s not that we got all political,” he said in an interview, “it’s that politics became pop culture.” Indeed, it’s clear that politics has always been a feature of South Park; indeed, the show has seen four presidents come and go in its lifetime, and one that came back again and is now refusing to leave.

Nevertheless, they downplay any suggestion that their new MAGA-baiting direction in any way favors the left. “We’re just very down-the-middle guys,” Parker told The New York Times. “Any extremists of any kind we make fun of. We did it for years with the woke thing. That was hilarious to us. And this is hilarious to us.”

Here’s how South Park has reflected the changing landscape of America…

South Park looks kindly on William Jefferson Clinton, the 42nd president of the United States, but through a prism that doesn’t reflect well on his legacy. The Bill Clinton that appears in the show is a kindly but somewhat seedy uncle figure, who made his first appearance in Episode 2 of Season 2: “Cartman’s Mom is Still a Dirty Sl*t”. As the mystery of Eric Cartman’s father deepens, his mother Liane lures Clinton to bed in a bid to persuade the President to legalize abortion at 40 trimesters (i.e., ten years).

This is pretty dark even by South Park standards, but Clinton is relieved to hear that Liane is confusing abortion with adoption. Clinton popped up a few times more, notably in “The Red Badge of Gayness” (1999), which saw Cartman join a historical re-enactment group and accidentally trigger events that lead to Clinton almost reversing the results of the Civil War. After his presidency, “Sexual Healing” (2010) found Stan, Kenny and their naïve friend Butters Stotch being labelled sex addicts after accidental exposure to pornography. Triggering the CDC, who are baffled by a recent wave of rich men who want to have sex with lots of women that aren’t their wives, they boys are sent to re-education lessons alongside Clinton, Tiger Woods, David Letterman, Charlie Sheen and David Duchovny.

Clinton’s last appearance came after his wife Hillary’s shock defeat in 2016; in the episode “Oh Jeez” literally a day after the election, Clinton appears at South Park Elementary, doing a duet with Bill Cosby — two years before he was imprisoned for aggravated indecent assault — and advertising a mysterious “Gentlemen’s Club”.

Clinton’s star turn, however, came in the 1999 feature South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut, in which the flatulent Canadian comedians Terrance and Phillip outrage the parents of South Park with their foul-mouthed hit comedy Asses of Fire. Clinton retaliates by abducting Terrance and Phillip and threatening to execute them, signaling his intent to invade Canada. In response, Canada bombs the Baldwin brothers, who all live in the same Hollywood mansion, and Stan leads a rescue mission to free Terrance and Phillip as the world teeters on the brink of destruction by Saddam Hussein, who orchestrates his master plan from the bowels of hell.

Bush Jr. made his entrance to South Park with a walk-on part in what’s still the show’s most controversial episode, “Super Best Friends” (July 2001), which has since disappeared from most streaming services. The episode involves illusionist David Blaine descending on South Park and dazzling the boys with his street magic. Blaine, however, is the head of a sinister cult, and when President Bush refuses to grant his followers (“Blainetologists”) tax-exempt status, Blaine tells them to drown themselves in the Reflecting Pool in Washington DC. Luckily, his evil plan is thwarted by the Super Best Friends, a coalition including Jesus Christ, Krishna, Laozi, Budda and — in case you were wondering why it’s so hard to find online — the prophet Muhammad.

In a similar vein, Bush has a slightly larger role in “Mystery of the Urinal Deuce”, which documents the aftermath of an errant number two in the boys’ toilets. As the identity of the culprit becomes the talk of the school, Cartman immerses himself in 9/11 conspiracy theories, believing that the terrorist attack was actually an inside job staged by the Bush administration. Bush and his cabinet emerge at the end, however, to reveal that this conspiracy theory is itself a conspiracy, one perpetuated by the government.  “People need to think we’re all-powerful, that we control the world,” explains Bush. “If they knew we weren’t in charge of 9/11, then we appear to control nothing.”

Compared to Clinton, Bush seems to get off fairly lightly during his tenure, undergoing a makeover from the Queer Eye for the Straight Guy team in “South Park is Gay!” (2003), which sees the whole town turning metrosexual. But Parker and Stone had other plans for him, namely the eight-episode meta-sitcom That’s My Bush!, which brilliantly parodied traditional American sitcoms like Benson and The Jeffersons with contrived plots, laugh tracks from a supposedly “live studio audience” and a catchy theme tune (“He’s the president in residence/He’s kind of in charge…”). Timothy Bottoms starred as Bush, who gets into scrapes such as mistakenly taking ecstasy instead of aspirin, hosting a pro-choice dinner at the same time as an anti-abortion event, and accidentally firing a space laser at Austria. It was first aired in April 2001 and canceled four months later.

The Barack Obama Years (2009-2017)

Parker and Stone are known for leaving everything until the last minute, as documented in the 2011 film 6 Days to Air, which pulls back the curtain on the pair’s seemingly chaotic creative process. These instincts came in handy in 2008 when Parker noticed that the schedule for the 12^th season of South Park meant that the 12^th show would premiere on the day after the election. As a result, “About Last Night…” borrows heavily on real-life events, including verbatim swathes of Barack Obama’s victory speech.

The episode is, in some senses, one of South Park’s most political, since it accurately reflects the pair’s ambiguous relationship with the subject. Half of South Park is ecstatic (“Here comes the change everybody! Everything is going to be awesome now!”) while the other half is horrified (“It’s all over. The country as we know it is about to change. We’re all dead”). Needless to say, Parker and Stone quickly got bored with the subject, adding a subplot that saw Obama teaming up with his apparent nemesis John McCain to dig a tunnel from the Oval Office to the Smithsonian and steal the Hope Diamond.

Lightning struck twice when Obama was re-elected in 2012, and in an episode shown the day after his win, Obama’s victory is shown to have been orchestrated by Cartman. Eerily foreshadowing Donald Trump’s obsession with vote-harvesting, “Obama Wins!” begins with Cartman posing as a small child on a whirlwind tour of swing states, stealing all the votes for the opposition. Over dinner at Red Lobster, Morgan Freeman drops in to narrate what’s been going on: Cartman has been hired to rig the election by the Chinese government, who demand the rights to the Star Wars franchise in return. Unluckily for Cartman, Mickey Mouse turns up in Boba Fett’s spaceship to thwart Cartman’s plan to blackmail the Chinese into letting him play Luke Skywalker’s son.

The Donald Trump Years Part One (2017-2021)

Parker and Stone have been accused of cynicism, but the fact that they seemed blind-sided by Donald Trump’s first term in office suggests otherwise: The November 2016 episode “Oh Jeez” — which, again, aired the night after the election — was originally predicated on the idea of Bill Clinton becoming “First Gentleman” as his wife took the world stage. It was quickly scrapped, with Stan’s liberal father Randy ruefully noting, “We’ve learned that women can be anything, except for president.”

Prior to that, Trump had appeared briefly in 2001’s “The Entity” as a Dragon’s Den-style businessman, but only as a nod to his success in The Apprentice. Nowadays, he seems the perfect butt for the South Park team’s jokes, but, at the time he was a reality TV personality, which were fast becoming ten a penny. Thinking that Trump would be a flash in the pan that would date the series, they created a proxy instead: Mr. Garrison, a teacher at South Park Elementary, who has appeared in the show since the beginning. Mr. Garrison has been through a lot in the years since; his puppet teaching aid, Mr. Hat, turned out to be a member of the Ku Klux Klan, and in Season 9 he became Janet for a while before de-transitioning and finally coming to terms with the fact that he is gay.

In the September 2015 episode “Where My Country Gone?”, however, Mr. Garrison began spouting populist barroom politics, demanding a wall be built to keep out illegal Canadians with their “dirty families and stupid music”. Mr. Garrison’s policies strike a chord with the American public, who elect him and his running mate (Caitlyn Jenner) in a surprise upset. Unlike Trump, however, Mr. Garrison is uneasy with fame and actively self-sabotages his success. Holding rallies, however, is addictive, and during a spring break at Myrtle Beach with his partner, Rick, Mr. Garrison passes a MAGA merchandise store and falls back on old habits, sneaking out to rally while Rick is asleep.

The Joe Biden Years (2021-2025)

Curiously, Joseph Robinette Biden — 47^th President of the United States — has never appeared in a significant role in South Park, having had his animated cameo cut from “About Last Night…”. Instead, the only president that actually looks and sounds like a real-life South Park character has been glimpsed only once, and in a one-off special at that — in “South ParQ Vaccination Special” (2021), Biden’s photograph can be seen on a deranged QAnon anti-vax conspiracy theorist’s notice board, defaced with a pair of devil horns and a tail.

The Donald Trump Years Part Two (2025-Present)

When Donald Trump came back to the White House last year, Parker and Stone were ready for him. The 27^th and 28^th series, five episodes apiece, went after Trump with a vengeance, possibly emboldened by the show’s freshly signed $1.5 billion deal with Paramount+. In a callback to the show’s portrayal of Iraqi tyrant Saddam Hussein in the late ’90s, and in contrast to its usual rough, cut-out aesthetic, Trump was presented as a photo-realistic montage of the real Trump, with a slit for a mouth and a squeaky high-pitched voice that didn’t even try to sound like an impression.

The first episode of the Series 27, “Sermon on the ’Mount” addressed the President’s litigious tendencies by making a whole show out of them, starting with the closure of NPR. Trump’s attempts to make schools more Christian doesn’t go down well with the citizens of South Park, but Trump countersues them for $3.5 million, with a clause that the town must produce pro-Trump commercials. The first, a deepfake horror show, depicts a morbidly obese, sweaty Trump lumbering through an arid desert, ripping off his trademark suit and tie until he is naked except for his shoes and sock-suspenders. “His penis is teeny-tiny,” says the voiceover, “but his love for us is large.”

South Park was back with a bang, taking frequent trips to the White House and Mar-a-Lago, depicted as a Fantasy Island-style resort where a tiny J.D. Vance plays Trump’s Herve Villechaize-like sidekick, excitedly shouting “Baass! Baasss!” whenever a plane lands. All of Trump’s inner circle are in for a roasting as Trump conducts a brazen affair with Satan, somehow getting him pregnant. Meanwhile, Melania haunts the West Wing like a Japanese wraith, Peter Thiel sings self-aggrandizing songs about his deep knowledge of the Antichrist, Pam Bondi finds her nose covered in a strange brown ooze, and Kristi Noem, notorious for shooting her puppy dog Cricket, goes gun crazy in a Pets Galore store.

The reaction from the White House was strangely toothless — “This show hasn’t been relevant for over 20 years,” said a statement, “and is hanging on by a thread with uninspired ideas in a desperate attempt for attention” — but sources claimed Trump was seething. With Season 29 scheduled to start just two days after the Emmys on 16 September, all eyes while be on Parker and Stone to see what they’ll do for an encore.