Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem is pushing back against South Park after the long-running animated series portrayed her as a Botox-obsessed dog killer in its latest episode skewering the Trump administration.
Speaking on The Glenn Beck Program podcast, Noem dismissed the segment as a cheap shot. “It’s so lazy to just constantly make fun of women for how they look. It’s only the liberals and the extremists who do that,” she said. “If they wanted to criticize my job, go ahead and do that, but clearly they can’t. They just pick something petty like that.”
The episode, titled Got a Nut, aired Wednesday and features Noem’s animated counterpart running an orientation session for new ICE recruits. Midway through, the character recalls shooting her own puppy — a reference to Noem’s 2023 memoir, in which she wrote about killing her 14-month-old dog, Cricket — before graphically shooting several more dogs on screen. The plotline also pokes fun at her use of Botox.
Vice President JD Vance, depicted in the episode as a miniature Donald Trump servant, acknowledged his own appearance in the show with a tongue-in-cheek post on X: “Well, I’ve finally made it.”
The exchange between Noem and South Park lands in the middle of a larger, somewhat contradictory conversation inside the Trump administration about the show’s cultural relevance. Just last month, the White House declared the series “not relevant” in response to an episode mocking Trump. Yet the Department of Homeland Security recently used a South Park screengrab in an official recruitment post for ICE, touting a $50,000 signing bonus.
When South Park reposted DHS’s tweet with the caption, “Wait, so we ARE relevant?” the department doubled down, thanking the show for “drawing attention to ICE law enforcement recruitment” and calling on “patriotic Americans” to help remove dangerous criminals from the country.
The back-and-forth reflects South Park’s enduring place in the political and cultural conversation, despite — or perhaps because of — its decades-old format and deliberately abrasive tone. It also highlights how political figures who dismiss criticism as irrelevant often find themselves leaning into the very cultural flashpoints they claim to ignore.
Behind the scenes, the show itself is navigating change. In July, the Trump administration approved an $8 billion merger between Paramount and Skydance Media, placing South Park under new leadership at CBS. George Cheeks, known for canceling The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, will now oversee Comedy Central programming, including the series.
For Noem, the parody arrives during a period of heightened visibility as she balances her role at DHS with her position in Trump’s reelection campaign. Whether the animated depiction hurts her politically or energizes her supporters remains unclear — but for now, she’s made it clear she won’t take the joke quietly.
