Toby Morton is known for trolling politicians by acquiring domain names they might want and using them to host satirical content.

South Park writer bought Trump-Kennedy Center domain names months ago to troll president

Toby Morton is known for trolling politicians by acquiring domain names they might want and using them to host satirical content.

By Mekishana Pierre

Mekishana Pierre

Mekishana Pierre is a news writer at **. She has been working at EW since 2025. Her work has previously appeared on *Entertainment Tonight* and Popsugar.

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December 26, 2025 1:52 p.m. ET

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'South Park' portrays Donald Trump. Credit:

It looks like the writers of *South Park* are following in *The Simpsons*' footsteps when it comes to predicting future events.

In a recent interview with *The Washington Post*, writer Toby Morton revealed that not only did he predict that Donald Trump would decide to add his name to the The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, he prepared for it. In August, the writer, who regularly buys political domains and turns them into satirical websites as a form of activism, bought the rights to both trumpkennedycenter.org and trumpkennedycenter.com.

"As soon as Trump began gutting the Kennedy Center board earlier this year, I thought, 'Yep, that name's going on the building,'" Morton, a comedy writer who has worked on series such as *South Park* and *Mad TV, *told the publication. "The rest followed on schedule."

Donald J. Trump attends the 2025 Kennedy Center Honors.

Taylor Hill/FilmMagic

Morton said he closely followed news of Trump's takeover of the institution: In February, the Trump administration removed the Joe Biden-appointed 18 board members, including then-board chairman David M. Rubenstein and the institution's longtime president, Deborah F. Rutter, leaving its current iteration made up entirely of Trump appointees, including Usha Vance, the wife of Vice President JD Vance, and the president's chief of staff, Susie Wiles; that same month, the Center announced that Trump himself would serve as the new chairman of the board.

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In August, Trump announced plans to personally host the Kennedy Center Honors, which motivated Morton to buy the domains.

Morton's purchase was made months before White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt announced that the Kennedy Center board voted "unanimously" to rename the institution "the Trump-Kennedy Center" in late December, "because of the unbelievable work President Trump has done over the last year in saving the building."

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Morton didn't reveal how he plans to use the domains he purchased, but teased, “it’ll absolutely reflect the absurdity of the moment. Lots of surprises. Some things are truly hard to parody, though."

"The Kennedy Center has always been a cultural institution meant to outlast any one administration or personality," he asserted. "It's meant to honor culture, not ego. Once it was treated like personal branding, satire became unavoidable."

While the writer said he hasn't been contacted by the Trump administration asking to buy the domains from him, he has gotten inquiries from "a few random lawyers confidently explaining that satire is illegal now."

New sign reading 'The Donald Trump and The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts' on Dec. 19.

Al Drago/Bloomberg via Getty

The renaming immediately drew the ire of the political family, with the likes of Robert F. Kennedy's grandson Joe Kennedy III and John F. Kennedy's niece Maria Shriver and grandson Jack Schlossberg all speaking out.

Ohio Rep. Joyce Beatty also contested Leavitt’s version of events in her own social media post. "For the record. This was not unanimous," she wrote. "I was muted on the call and not allowed to speak or voice my opposition to this move. Also for the record, this was not on the agenda. This was not consensus. This is censorship."

Beatty, who serves as an ex-officio member on the Kennedy Center Board of Trustees, added, "Clearly, the Congress has a say in this. This center, The Kennedy Center, was created by the Congress. I think it's important for us to know that this is just another attempt to evade the law and not let the people have a say."**

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