South Park, The Smithsonian, and Trump's Culture War | Pivot

Morris frames Trump’s demand that museums spotlight the “brightness of America” over “how bad slavery was” as classic propaganda—an attempt to purify national narratives, minimize atrocities like slavery, and test-drive this approach in Washington, DC before exporting it to other cities.

By installing allies, ousting longtime chair David Rubenstein, picking honorees like Stallone, KISS, and Gloria Gaynor, and openly joking about honoring himself, Trump is trying to turn a bipartisan, establishment arts ritual into a personal prestige vehicle and culture-war showcase.

Swisher and Morris note that the show’s crude animation masks a very direct comedic ideology: it turns subtext into text, openly mocking Trump’s alleged bribery, tech’s sycophancy, and his “micropenis,” while also needling everyone from religion to trans issues with equal-opportunity cruelty.

They argue that And Just Like That smartly absorbed criticism of the original’s whiteness by introducing characters like Sarita Choudhury’s real-estate mogul and Nicole Ari Parker’s Lisa in ways that feel socially and character-logically plausible, rather than tokenistic box-checking.

While Trump cynically vacillates between calling TikTok a national security threat and exploiting it politically, both hosts describe their own and their kids’ drift toward Reddit and YouTube—for practical information and entertainment—rather than performative platforms like X.