‘The Simpsons’ Predicted Donald Trump’s Presidency 16 Years Ago, And They’re Finally Acknowledging It

Sixteen years ago, The Simpsons predicted Donald Trump becoming president, and back then, nobody would have guessed that having “The Donald” in the Oval Office would one day become a reality. But with the results of last week’s presidential elections, Trump is now the U.S. president-elect, and that future-themed episode from way back has proven to be right on the money. And the show has just acknowledged that fact, doing so in Bart Simpson’s chalkboard gag at the start of the most recent episode.

The Simpsons has been a Nostradamus of sorts on occasions. Three years ago, BuzzFeed published a list featuring 21 ways The Simpsons has predicted the future, and this list included some very interesting examples. However, most of the “predictions” weren’t direct lifts from what was portrayed in the episode; for example, the “yard work simulator” kids enjoyed in a 1998 episode was a different kind of experience from FarmVille, a game that debuted on the Facebook platform in 2009. There was also the example of Mick Jagger and Keith Richards of the Rolling Stones (then voicing themselves) giving Homer Simpson a “Guitar Hero” jacket in a 2002 episode, three years before Guitar Hero, the video game, first arrived.

There were, however, some predictions that turned out almost similar, if not exactly the same, in real life. For example, a future-themed episode from 1995 saw Lisa’s British fiancee talking to his watch, much like what you can do with today’s smartwatches. And a 2008 gag wherein Homer’s vote was repeatedly changed from Barack Obama to John McCain rang eerily true four years later when a Pennsylvania voting machine was discovered to be replacing Obama votes with Mitt Romney votes.

This all brings us to what happened last week when America cast its vote in the 2016 presidential elections. Sixteen years prior to that, The Simpsons hinted that Donald Trump would one day win the presidency, as the episode “Bart to the Future” had Lisa Simpson as president-elect, pledging to undo the damage done by Trump’s fictional administration. It did get the year wrong, as the episode portrayed Bart looking into his grim future in the year 2030, but it did portray Trump as Lisa’s immediate predecessor in the White House.

‘The Simpsons’ staff are not thrilled about their prediction of President Trump in 2000 https://t.co/xl97UIcrw0 pic.twitter.com/vaAE0nZn6x

— The Boston Globe (@BostonGlobe) November 14, 2016

As we saw in last week’s elections, the prediction was pretty much spot-on, and The Simpsons acknowledged that in the chalkboard gag of Sunday’s episode “Havana Wild Weekend.” As reported by Time, this came in the form of Bart writing the words “Being Right Sucks” on the chalkboard, although the gag didn’t outright refer to The Simpsons being right about Donald Trump’s presidency. Still, the long-running show’s official Twitter account confirmed what most people may have assumed about the chalkboard gag – it was in reference to “Bart to the Future” mentioning Trump as a future President.

What motivated The Simpsons’ writing staff to predict a Trump presidency for the then-distant future? In an interview with the Hollywood Reporter in March, writer Dan Greaney said he wrote “Bart to the Future” partly as an attempt to warn viewers of what could happen if America “(goes) insane.”

“The important thing is that Lisa comes into the presidency when America is on the ropes, and that is the condition left by the Trump presidency … 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.”

For those who watched “Bart to the Future” when the episode first aired in 2000, it was mostly a humorous aside for fans of The Simpsons. But with Donald Trump having won the presidential elections, Greaney’s subtle warning has become yet another prediction come true for the venerable animated sitcom. And who knows if there will be more to come, what with the show having recently been renewed for another two seasons?

[Featured Image by 360b/Shutterstock]