When the new season of “South Park” premiered last month with a scene showing President Trump in bed with Satan discussing Jeffrey Epstein, the White House attacked the series as a “fourth-rate show” and said that it “hasn’t been relevant for over 20 years.”
But the episode drew strong ratings, and when the series returned on Wednesday night some of the Trump administration officials and allies who were skewered — including Vice President JD Vance — took a different tack, and tried to show they could take a joke.
“Well, I’ve finally made it,” Mr. Vance wrote on social media as he reposted a scene from the show that imagined Mar-a-Lago as “Fantasy Island” and the vice president as Tattoo, the short sidekick who was played by in the original series by the actor Hervé Villechaize.
In the episode, “Got a Nut,” Mr. Mackey, a school counselor, loses his job because of budget cuts and takes a position with Immigration and Customs Enforcement. He accompanies ICE on raids of a “Dora the Explorer Live!” show and of heaven, where he is told to round up only brown angels. The show portrays Kristi Noem, the Homeland Security secretary, who wrote in her memoir about shooting her dog, as a serial dog shooter.
“A few years ago I had to put my puppy down by shooting it in the face, because sometimes doing what’s important means doing what’s hard,” her character says in a training video.
“South Park,” which has routinely roasted political figures with satire and dark comedy since its debut in 1997, has regained momentum as its tart observations of the second Trump administration are commanding attention and breaking through online.
Before the episode aired, the Department of Homeland Security’s account on X shared a screenshot from a “South Park” trailer showing masked ICE agents — and added a link to its recruitment website.
The “South Park” social media account responded, “Wait, so we ARE relevant?” and added a ribald hashtag.
The second episode also briefly portrays Charlie Kirk, the founder and chief of the pro-Trump, youth-focused Turning Point USA. The real Mr. Kirk embraced the parody and approvingly shared several clips on his social media accounts, including a segment where Cartman fiercely debates “woke liberal students.”
“Not bad, Cartman,” he wrote on X, where he changed his avatar to an image of Cartman sporting a Kirk-like haircut.
Derrick Bryson Taylor is a Times reporter covering breaking news in culture and the arts.
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