Stephen Colbert praised South Park for its provocative season 27 premiere as his own show faces the axe for criticizing President Donald Trump.
The show’s episode featured an AI clip of President Donald Trump stripping naked in the desert. Most controversially, the clip featured a few shots of Trump’s “teeny-tiny” penis, which was given eyes in what its creators later revealed were an attempt to prevent the image being blurred by the network.
In his monologue Thursday, Colbert jokingly praised AI by saying, “If the government interfered with private AI, innovators at South Park wouldn’t be able to make important videos like this one…”
Colbert played the South Park clip of a deepfake Trump pulling off his underwear. The part that showed Trump’s unblurred penis wasn’t included.
“It is a message of hope,” Colbert said, as his audience applauded the clip.
Colbert continued, “That is an important message of hope for our times, and you can check it out right here…”
He pointed to a QR code at the corner of the screen. The code takes viewers to a website labeled, “He Trumped Us.” The page is owned by Comedy Central, and it shows the full, uncensored clip from the South Park premiere.
Colbert’s praise for the episode comes exactly one week after he announced that CBS, owned by the same parent company as Comedy Central, has canceled his late-night show. Colbert’s final-ever episode will air in May next year.
Colbert’s cancellation sparked concerns that the satirical shows owned by Paramount Global will be punished for making jokes at Trump’s expense, or pressured to go easier on him.
The Daily Show‘s Jon Stewart condemned Colbert’s firing on Monday. He insinuated that Paramount may have done it to avoid Trump’s interference with its ongoing $8 billion merger with Skydance Media.
In the lead-up to the recent South Park premiere, fans speculated that the new season might be restricted in its political commentary and might not share Stewart’s willingness to boldly criticize both Trump and Paramount.
The defiantly anti-Trump South Park premiere, which has already been condemned by Trump administration, has already quelled most of those concerns.
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