Here’s Why ‘King of the Hill’ Fans Don’t Have to Worry About Hank’s Politics in the Revival
Don’t worry about Donald Trump becoming a central figure in the new season of King of the Hill — this President has a famously strong handshake.
Despite the show’s tendency to poke fun at American culture, King of the Hill is explicitly not a satire, especially compared to an animated comedy like Beavis and Butt-Head. When creating King of the Hill, Mike Judge set out to make a more grounded, character-focused show than his breakthrough hit, taking inspiration from his friends and neighbors during his time living in the suburbs of Dallas to build the environment and inhabitants of Arlen, Texas. Given the demography of the real-life Dallas-Fort Worth area, King of the Hill’s characters were naturally going to skew conservative, but Hank Hill was always more of a “small government” Republican than a “suspend habeas corpus and deport all the brown children” one.
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With the King of the Hill revival set to premiere sometime this summer, Hank Hill will re-enter the zeitgeist at a tumultuous time for the American conservative movement and our country’s political landscape as a whole. However, any King of the Hill fans who worried that, in 2025, Hank would be grilling in a bright red hat should look to Judge's past comments on Hank's politics for reassurance that we're not about to see an entire King of the Hill episode about how proud Hank is to pay ten grand in tariffs for his new lawnmower.
Back in 2006, with the Bush Administration in its decline as its two hastily started wars continued to drain American taxpayers, Judge spoke to IGN about his then-new movie Idiocracy and his long-running sitcom King of the Hill, which was about to air its Season 10 finale. When Judge's interviewer asked him if he felt “tempted” to cover topical political material in the later seasons of King of the Hill, "given what's been going on in the last few years in the country" (how cute), Judge set the record straight on the place of politics in his sitcom.
“Less tempted, I guess,” Judge answered, “I try to not let the show get too political. To me, it's more social than political I guess you'd say, because that's funnier. I don't really like political reference humor that much.” But while King of the Hill didn't lean on punchlines pulled from the news, Hank's own conservative politics played an important role in his characterization, which led to better jokes than whatever anti-Bush bullshit was going on at the time over at shows like The Simpsons.
“I liked the episode where Hank's talking to the mailman and he says, ‘Why would anyone want to lick a stamp that has Bill Clinton on it?’” Judge recalled of the infamous Season 10 episode “Hank's Bully,” explaining, “To me that's just like more of a character thing about Hank than it is a political joke or anything.”
Given Hank's hilariously upright moral character, it's hard to envision a version of King of the Hill in which Hank has bought into President Trump's cult of personality. And, considering the crash-out Hank had when he was framed for renting an adult movie, it's especially hard to see him voting for someone who famously cheated on his wife with a pornstar. Hank doesn't even go for those sexy types.
