Flashback: Watch ‘The Simpsons’ Predict President Trump in 2000
If a year ago you had asked most political pundits if Donald Trump had a good chance of becoming president, most of them would’ve laughed at you. Even amid rumors of his 2016 run, it seemed absurd at the time to think he’d be a serious contender for the presidency.
If predicting Trump’s rise in 2015 was tough, imagine doing it in 2000. Sixteen years ago — almost to the day — The Simpsons did just that. In an episode called “Bart to the Future,” Bart gets a glimpse at his adult self: He’s a Duff-swilling slob like his father, but his sister Lisa has grown up to be president of the United States (“America’s first straight female president,” to be exact). As President Simpson tells her aides in one scene (at the 2:20 mark, above): “As you know, we’ve inherited quite a budget crunch from President Trump.” In fact, the country is “broke,” she learns, after Trump’s presidency.
Simpsons writer Dan Greaney recently told The Hollywood Reporter that the line was “a warning to America.”
“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,” he said.
Will America listen now that the joke has a chance of becoming reality?
Watch other great political moments from The Simpsons.