South Park airs brutal spoof of FCC chair Brendan Carr after Kirk assassination

South Park aired its first new episode since the assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk, delivering a brisk, brutal spoof of Federal Communications Chairman Brendan Carr. In the episode, titled “Conflict of Interest,” a cartoon Carr slides down greased stairs, consumes a stew laced with a toxin that makes him soil himself, and ends up in a hospital where a doctor warns that if the toxoplasmosis parasite reaches his brain, he could lose his freedom of speech. In the hospital bed, Vice President JD Vance gleefully greets the condition as a potential obstacle to Carr’s path to the presidency, telling him: “We can do this the easy way or the hard way.” The sequence underscores the show’s long-running habit of skewering Carr and, more broadly, the Trump-era regulatory agenda the character has championed in public appearances.

The episode, which bears the title “Conflict of Interest,” also finds Kyle and his classmates dabbling in a prediction-market plot thread about his mother and her political actions, a device the show uses to frame the procedural chaos surrounding Carr’s moves against media figures and outlets. The broadcast arrives amid renewed attention to Carr after he publicly urged ABC and Disney to take action against Jimmy Kimmel over remarks about Charlie Kirk’s killer. Those remarks contributed to an immediate suspension of Kimmel’s late-night program in several markets, with Nexstar and Sinclair—owners of a majority of ABC affiliates—also pulling the show offline in their markets.

In the real world, ABC later lifted the suspension, and “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” returned to the air on Tuesday. Kimmel, however, did not offer an apology for his remarks, repeating a stance that he believed his commentary reflected his view of public interest and democratic discourse. Carr, for his part, had argued that networks with broadcast licenses—ABC, NBC, and CBS among them—have an obligation to serve the public interest, and he asserted that Kimmel’s comments appeared to mislead audiences. Those conflicting signals have fed into broader debate about the line between satire and incitement, and about how much protection should be afforded to network hosts when they comment on political violence.

Nexstar and Sinclair, though, have not lifted their bans on Kimmel’s program in their markets and have instead replaced it with news programming on their ABC affiliates. The corporate maneuvering comes as Nexstar seeks regulatory clearance for its $6.2 billion acquisition of Tegna, a deal that would require changes to caps on how many stations the company can own. The acquisition, if approved, would reshape the landscape of local broadcasting and intensify scrutiny of ownership rules that Carr and his allies have called for reworking.

The episode’s satirical portrait also revisits the fallout surrounding the Kirk case: Comedy Central pulled an older episode that mocked the activist after news of his death broke, though the Kirk episode remains available to stream on Paramount+. Kirk’s longtime producer, Andrew Colvet, said in a post on X that Comedy Central made a mistake by pulling the episode, noting that Kirk “loved” being featured on the show. In the days leading up to the episode’s airdate, Parker and Stone indicated on social media that the show would not be released on schedule and had to be pushed from Sept. 17 to Sept. 24, reflecting the show’s week-to-week production approach and its tendency to incorporate current events.

South Park has long used its platform to lampoon political figures from both sides of the spectrum. The show’s creators, Trey Parker and Matt Stone, continue to produce new material in close alignment with current events, often wrapping episodes only after final political developments have emerged. Analysts note that the newest installment continues a decades-long tradition of treating regulatory battles, media ownership debates, and high-profile endorsements of public figures with a mix of irreverence and pointed social commentary.

As the cultural conversation around free speech, media responsibility, and the influence of political actors on journalism continues, the episode stands as a case study in how animated satire intersects with real-world regulatory and corporate tensions. Viewers are left with the sense that entertainers, lawmakers, and corporate executives alike are navigating a landscape where speech, satire, and policy collide in highly visible ways, and where a single late-night monologue can trigger reactions that ripple across multiple platforms and outlets.