Public Relations Expert Explains Why President Trump Should Let ‘South Park’ Cook for His Own Good

The more the Trump Administration melts down over South Park’s comedic criticisms, the higher the show’s record-breaking viewership numbers will soar, and the weaker Trump will look — call it the Mecha-Streisand effect.

When South Park came roaring back to cable television on July 23rd with the Season 27 premiere “Sermon on the ‘Mount,” the show’s long-awaited return following its most excruciatingly lengthy off-season ever didn’t disappoint — unless you work in the White House, that is. In South Park Season 27, President Donald “Saddam Hussein” Trump is a small-dicked, Middle-Eastern dictator who abuses the legal system to silence critics and solicit bribes while dodging questions about his close relationship to Jeffrey Epstein, and the President himself isn’t happy about South Park playing his parody so true-to-life.

Less than 24 hours after the premiere of “Sermon on the ‘Mount,” the White House put out an official statement in which they condemned South Park’s attacks on Trump and alleged that the show “hasn’t been relevant for over 20 years.” Given that South Park’s corporate overlords at Paramount Global have been on a Presidential appeasement campaign, as the show explicitly addressed in “Sermon on the ‘Mount,” many fans South Park fans worried that a triggered Trump would pressure the company to cancel South Park, just as Paramount silenced The Late Show with Stephen Colbert.

However, one Adrienne Uthe, Founder and Strategic Advisor at Kronus Communications, spoke to The Irish Star about Trump’s options for how to deal with South Park from a public relations perspective, and she believes that the smart move would not be for the President to have South Park canceled, but, rather, for him to lean into the parody as many of his allies have done since the official outburst. 

As such, we can probably expect Trump to sign an executive order canceling South Park before the season finale.

“I’m sure Trump could move some mountains to damage the South Park name and potentially get it canceled,” Uthe opined, though, in her professional opinion, that would turn the South Park parody into a much bigger PR nightmare for the President than it already is. “It wouldn’t be a good look,” Uthe said of the nuclear option, “You’ve got to be able to laugh at yourself, and needing to silence voices only shows weakness in this instance. South Park is consistent in that they make fun of everyone — let them cook.”

Of course, on the other hand, South Park’s mockery of President Trump is especially pointed in the current season, and Trump isn’t exactly known for taking the high road, even when it would serve his own interests to do so. Just this week, in the new episode “Got a Nut,” South Park further highlighted Trump’s links to Epstein, such as how Trump admitted that Epstein sourced underaged sex trafficking victims from the suspiciously teenaged staff at the Mar-a-Lago spa. In the episode, Trump forced Dora the Explorer into a “masseuse” position at his resort after ICE kidnapped the beloved child star.

The more savvy Trump allies have already tried to play off South Park’s parodies as if they’re in on the joke, such as one target from Wednesday’s episode, Charlie Kirk, who played the classic “Eric Cartman is based and correct and totally not a parody of America's worst political tendencies” trick after the episode aired. With limited options to respond to South Park unleashing what is already one of its most brutal works of political satire ever in Season 27, the grin-and-bear-it approach is certainly preferable to the hide-behind-an-assistant-press-secretary-and-cry-about-ratings one that Trump already tried.

In other words, Trump just needs to relax, guy!