The ‘Family Guy’ Team Defends The ‘Clearly Offensive’ Scene In The President Trump Episode

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Family Guy must be losing its edge. Donald Trump has not tweeted about Sunday’s episode of the long-running animated series, which skewered the president and his entire family. “Trump Guy” included jokes about Eric’s cluelessness, Melania slapping away her husband’s tiny hand, the administration’s close relationship to Vladimir Putin, and the episode ended with a minutes-long fight between Peter and Donald throughout Washington, D.C.

“If he says anything about Family Guy, it’ll be great,” executive producer Alec Sulkin told EW about the president’s response (or lack thereof). “We’ll have to air it on Fox News, though. Then maybe he’ll see it.” Fellow producer Rich Appel also commented on the episode’s most shocking scene, in which Donald grabs Meg (the Tiffany of the Griffins) by the… well, you know.

“Let’s play a game. If I say the words Donald Trump to you, what’s the first thing you think?…. The only point in using Meg was to show that men like Trump can attempt to prey on vulnerable people. It’s clearly offensive and gross and not appropriate. But not only didn’t we not want to show it, we don’t want to be too explicit about exactly what happened… We wanted to touch on this aspect of Trump’s public face, without putting Meg in too compromised a position. And the focus of the show was not [that]; our point was that Peter and Lois found it hard to believe at first that the president could be accused of an unwanted touching, but as is so often the case, people who question someone’s reporting of an unwanted touching realize they need to take it really seriously, and that’s what happens in the episode.”

Here’s Peter and Lois’ response after Meg told them what happened.


Meg’s parents eventually believe her, leading Peter to quit his job as Trump’s press secretary (the president is depicted as a Jabba the Hutt-esque figure, with Mike Pence as own personal Salacious B. Crumb), but that’s not the most controversial moment in episode; that would be when Peter describes the great Bob’s Burgers as looking like it was animated in a “moving car,” and that it’s Trump’s favorite adult cartoon. “Because we like them, respect them, and are jealous of them. And really, doesn’t that motivate 70 percent of human behavior?” Appel said about why Family Guy went after Bob’s. “They’re talented and they’ve won awards we have not. What more do we need to say?”

Meanwhile, Louise Belcher is already plotting her revenge.

(Via Entertainment Weekly and TVLine)