‘The Simpsons’ Predicted a Donald Trump Presidency 16 Years Ago
Watch this clip that totally called Trump’s stunning ascension to the White House.
Sixteen years ago, the idea that Donald Trump would ascend to the presidency was so outlandish that The Simpsons used it as a joke in a now-stunningly prescient episode.
In “Bart to the Future,” which first aired in 2000, Bart gets a glimpse at Lisa in the Oval Office, after she’s elected to serve as “America’s first straight female president.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2hzRnwLTMfM
“As you know, we’ve inherited quite a budget crunch from President Trump,” Lisa says, before Millhouse chimes in with some details. “Remember when the last administration decided to invest in our nation’s children? Big mistake.”
Episode writer Dan Greaney spoke to The Daily Beast about this gag back in August of 2015 and admitted that even though suggesting Trump as president was supposed to sound absurd, it didn’t seem entirely out of the realm of possibility.
Indeed, that’s why the joke worked. Sure, Trump didn’t seem like someone who’d be president, but one could imagine America electing him. As Greaney put it, “That’s the America we know and love, doing what it does,” he said.
Good on Greaney for getting this call right, but let’s hope his prescience doesn’t end here. After Trump, we’d love to see the first cartoon president.
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