Simpson’s Creator Talks Eerie Trump Presidential Prediction

Donald Trump’s shocking presidential win has many rewatching eerie moments from the classic series The Simpsons, who predicted the outcome 16 years ago.

The March 2000 episode titled “Bart to the Future,” takes the character on a journey to a world where his sister Lisa is the “first straight female” president. While it’s a victory for the country, she also inherits a collapsed market and chaos from Trump’s presidency. Speaking with The Guardian last month, the show’s creator Matt Groening said the bit was meant to show just how crazy America would become. “We predicted that he would be president back in 2000 – but [Trump] was, of course, the most absurd placeholder joke name that we could think of at the time, and that’s still true,” he said. “It’s beyond satire.”

https://youtube.com/watch?v=lxjM1yCcqTQ

In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, writer Dan Greaney who wrote the joke was doubtful the country would see the correlation. “It was a warning to America,” Greaney said. “That just seemed like the logical last stop before hitting bottom. It was pitched because it was consistent with the vision of America going insane. What we needed was for Lisa to have problems that were beyond her fixing, that everything went as bad as it possibly could, and that’s why we had Trump be president before her. I am tickled we are getting all this attention, but I don’t think it’s going to trigger this well-awaited re-evaluation of my episode that I was hoping for. The Simpsons has always kind of embraced the over-the-top side of American culture … and [Trump] is just the fulfillment of that.”

Another clip that has made its rounds on the web is a brief web animation titled “Trumptastic Voyage,” that shows Homer going down an elevator with Trump as he waves to supporters. The clip was mistaken for the 2000’s episode, but Groening explained the clip was made in July to mock Trump’s entrance. Reports at the time claimed the president-elect was paying for his supporters–hence the “PAID” and “VOTE” signs the fans carry in the clip. Homer then falls into Trump’s thin blonde locks and gets trapped in a Bermuda Triangle of sorts. Homer wakes up and is later carried away by two security guards as Trump announces his run for The White House.

“We’ve been trying to figure out how to do more, and it’s really hard.If by chance he gets elected, which I doubt highly will happen, I think we’ll suddenly be very inspired,” he said. “Mr Trump’s election, as horrible as it would be, would be great for comedy – as comedians always say.”

It also didn’t help that the team also predicted a pretty fair outcome of the electoral votes between Clinton and Trump.