“Whatever! I do what I want!”

That line, bellowed with full-throated glee by South Park’s Eric Cartman, has echoed through pop culture for nearly three decades now. For a while, it was mostly ironic. Then, disturbingly, it wasn’t.

Because at some point, America elected Cartman president.

The other day, I was reading yet another story about his bad behavior when it hit me like a ton of bricks: Trump is Cartman. Once you see it, it’s impossible to unsee.

Ok, no, not literally. But spiritually, psychically, emotionally. Donald Trump, the real estate tycoon who managed to go bankrupt repeatedly, then became a reality show star, and somehow wound up as leader of the free world, embodies the Cartman ethos to a staggering degree. He’s the bratty id of the nation made flesh: shameless, entitled, wildly self-absorbed, and — somehow, bafflingly — wildly popular not in spite of his cruelty, but because of it.

And just like Cartman, his appeal isn’t an accident. It’s a symptom.

Let’s get this out of the way: Trump is not literally Cartman. Honestly, it’s hard to tell sometimes. If he didn’t predate Cartman by a few decades, you could be mistaken for thinking otherwise, but he’s not. Disclaimer. Cartman is a ten-year-old cartoon sociopath who once tricked a boy into eating his own parents. Trump, by contrast, merely flirted with nuclear war on Twitter. So, you know, different leagues.

But peel back the skin of political theater, and what you find is eerily familiar.

Both are cruelty-forward characters.

Cartman’s greatest hits are exercises in domination and humiliation: feeding a kid his parents, forming an insurrectionist movement in kindergarten, faking disabilities for personal gain. His power lies in his shamelessness, his refusal to be shamed.

Trump’s performances are no different. Whether mocking a disabled reporter, bullying rivals with childish nicknames, bragging about molesting women, or suggesting that a sitting U.S. congressman’s dead wife was somehow responsible for her own death, his cruelty is his core brand. He insulted John McCain’s war record, saying he preferred soldiers “who weren’t captured”. He mocked a Gold Star family whose son died in Iraq. He told congresswomen of color to “go back” to their countries. He ordered peaceful protestors tear-gassed and cleared so he could pose with a bible in front of a church. And on and on. His base doesn’t recoil at any of this — they revel in it.

Why? Because, like Cartman, Trump gives permission. Permission to punch down. Permission to stop pretending to be “woke”, or “polite”, or — God forbid — “empathetic”.[1] He makes cruelty seem not just acceptable, but funny. And funny, as we know, is a potent force.

Neither one believes rules apply to them.

Cartman gets away with everything because he screams louder than anyone else. Trump? Pretty much the same playbook. Tax laws? Executive norms? Court rulings? Eh — he’ll just lie, stall, or shout “fake news” until the outrage burns out. He doesn’t beat the rules so much as exhaust them.

His core supporters admire this. They see institutions as hypocritical anyway, so why not cheer the guy who plays the game like Grand Theft Auto?

They both treat empathy as weakness.

Remember when Cartman started a Christian rock band just to win a bet, and casually profaned an entire religion for profit? Or when he used Kyle’s dying grandma as an excuse to start a telethon — for himself?

Now think of Trump standing at Ground Zero after 9/11 and bragging that his building was now the tallest in Manhattan. Or claiming that soldiers suffering from PTSD were weak.

Empathy isn’t just absent from either character — it’s actively mocked.

Their fanbases are paradoxically loyal — and ironic.

Cartman fans laugh at him — until they start laughing with him. Trump supporters might start with “he says what we’re all thinking” and end up wearing QAnon capes and storming the Capitol.

Both figures operate in a space where irony, sincerity, and nihilism blur together until no one quite knows where the joke ends. And both thrive on the confusion.

It’s tempting to blame all this on ignorance, but that’s too easy. Trump’s base isn’t a mindless cult. Well… mostly. It’s a coalition of the disillusioned, the angry, the gleeful trolls, and the deeply afraid. Many of them know he lies. Many like that he lies — because it proves he’s not bound by the system’s rules. Same with Cartman. He doesn’t earn respect; he demands attention. And in our media-saturated, outrage-driven culture, attention equals power.

Cartman is a mirror. So is Trump.

And what they reflect isn’t just the ugliness of one person — but the collective, unresolved damage of a country that’s never fully reckoned with itself. A country that claims to love underdogs but secretly worships bullies. A country that calls itself free but finds freedom unbearable unless it’s the freedom to dominate.[2]

In South Park, Cartman’s victories are always temporary, always undone by his own hubris. The show — however crass — maintains a kind of moral balance. Trey Parker and Matt Stone, the show’s creators, use Cartman to highlight excess and then having made their point, they mute him by the end and make sure he doesn’t win. But in real life? We gave Cartman the nuclear codes.

Twice.

And we might do it again. He has already been talking about serving a third term, and his increasingly sycophantic GOP has already floated the idea of changing constitutional rules to allow it.[3]

So… maybe it’s time we stop laughing. Or at least ask what, exactly, we’re laughing at.

❦

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