Judd Apatow has a theory for why Trump stays quiet on South Park mockery

Judd Apatow, the famed comedic filmmaker behind Knocked Up and Freaks & Geeks, gave a theory for why Donald Trump has mostly stayed quiet about South Park's vicious mockery of him in recent episodes.

On Wednesday, The Daily Beast published an extensive interview with Apatow, ostensibly to promote his upcoming HBO documentary about Mel Brooks. The conversation touched on a lot of subjects relating to the modern comedy landscape in Hollywood, including efforts to satirize Trump's return to White House and the chaos he has caused.

At one point, Apatow was pressed about the long-running animated comedy series, South Park, which dedicated almost the entirety of its most recent run of episodes to skewering Trump, his political agendas and the various figureheads of his administration. Despite initially lashing out against the show when the new episodes premiered, Trump and the White House have remained largely mum about it, a development that clashes with the president's tendency to loudly trash anyone critical of him.

The Daily Beast suggested to Apatow that perhaps Trump's aides are simply not sharing the episodes with him anymore, but the filmmaker suggested a deeper theory: not wanting to give South Park a spotlight.

"Who knows, maybe they have a secret plan of what they’re going to do to South Park," Apatow said. "Surely, someone just said, you’re not going to win that one. But that doesn’t mean that they’re not sitting in a room going, what do we do? But the fact that he’s silent about it is interesting, because you always wonder, why does he speak out? And does he even write any of these Truth Social posts? So who’s the person that’s like, 'Don’t mess with South Park?'

"One day, we’ll probably find out about why, when those things aired, they just said, 'Be silent,'" he continued. "And the truth is, you should be silent because the second you complain about it, 10 times more people watch it. So it might be that they know how accurate this criticism is, and they really don’t want more people to know about it."

Prior to its most recent return, South Park creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker signed a $1.5 billion deal with Paramount to secure the show's streaming rights for Paramount+ until 2027. Paramount was notably merged with Skydance earlier this year and brought under the control of David Ellison, a close ally and supporter of Trump. The company is widely suspected to have canceled host Stephen Colbert's late-night show at Trump's behest, a move referenced in South Park's first new episode of the year.