‘The Simpsons’ Responds to President Trump Prediction: ‘Being Right Sucks’
Time and time again, fans dismissed the possibility of a Trump presidency as a throwaway Simpsons gag, even during the real-life campaign. Now, The Simpsons itself has a chance to acknowledge one of its strangest prophecies, one it’s none-too-thrilled to have been right on.
Having repeatedly lampooned the idea of a real-life presidential victory for Donald Trump, The Simpsons took its first post-election intro to acknowledge the 2000 prediction that saw future President Lisa Simpson referencing Trump as her predecessor. As you can imagine, writers were none-too-thrilled:
The original 2000 flash-forward outing saw Bart granted a vision of his bleak future 30 years down the line, the same one in which Lisa had become President of the United States. Lisa specifically references “a budget crunch from President Trump,” a line writer Dan Greaney told The Hollywood Reporter somewhat haunts him:
It was a warning to America … and 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. […]
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.
The line was written some years before Trump’s reality persona fermented on The Celebrity Apprentice, though Greaney still resisted celebrating the prediction:
I am tickled we are getting all this attention, but I don’t think it’s going to trigger this well-awaited reevaluation 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.
You can watch the line for yourself at 2:21 below, but will “Simpsons did it” jokes forever carry an ominous tone?
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