Family Guy previewed their Trump storyline at New York Comic Con on Saturday at a panel with showrunners Rich Appel and Alec Sulkin, producer Kara Vallow, voice actor Mike Henry, and writer-producer-voice actor John Viener, showing a clip of the fight between Peter Griffin and Donald Trump. As previously reported, the two-episode special follows the Griffins’ journey to Washington, D.C. when Peter becomes a fake news anchor then gets hired as Trump’s communications director. And that’s when the trouble begins. “Our president makes a pass at Meg,” said Appel. “Ultimately, that leads to Peter losing faith in President Trump.”
The clip from the second episode, which will air sometime in January, follows the “epic battle” that goes down after Peter discovers Trump’s bad behavior. It begins with a verbal altercation: Peter accuses Trump of being “cash poor,” which kicks off a fight that travels from Air Force One to the White House to the Smithsonian, where they hijack two of the old planes on display then crash into the Washington Monument. Near the top of the monument, Peter starts to slip and Trump seems to experience a sudden change of heart and reaches down to save him, but Peter can’t reach Trump’s hand because it’s too tiny. (Haha. Ha.) They fall into the abyss but are saved from certain death by … Justin Trudeau, who then proceeds to fly away on the backs of two geese. Their battle also involves Trump’s toupee used as a rope, Sarah Huckabee Sanders lying to journalists, and the Obama portrait being stomped on by Trump then kissed by Peter.
Asked whether he was hoping Trump will see the episode and react on Twitter, Appel said, “Definitely.” While the show has, for the most part, avoided any overtly political commentary and would normally not take a stand on any issues (except for marijuana legalization, because Family Guy is the animated TV equivalent of white men who drink a lot of Monster), Appel said that Trump’s behavior is something that “transcends politics.”
After an audience member suggested that Peter himself “would be the kind of guy to vote for Trump,” showrunner Alec Sulkin did not disagree. “I think you may be right about that, because Peter is not particularly bright,” he said. “I also feel like Peter kind of ends up figuring things out by the end of an episode, and then forgets it all again. So I would hope that he would come to his senses in the voting booth and write in ‘Captain Crunch’ or something.”
