politics

Donald Trump's US election win predicted by Simpsons 16 years ago.

Donald Trump has been elected as the next President of the United States — a reality The Simpsons predicted 16 years ago.

In March 2000, the television show aired an episode titled Bart to the Future, where Lisa Simpson had become President of the United States in an alternate reality.

Tasked with restoring order and repairing the nation, she said the country had “inherited quite a budget crunch from President Trump”.

Writer Dan Greaney, who penned the episode, said earlier this year the throwaway line was intended as a “warning to America”.

“That just seemed like the logical last step before hitting bottom. It was pitched because it was consistent with the vision of America going insane,” he told The Hollywood Reporter.

He said he could not remember who came up with the idea of Trump as president but that it made sense at the time, as the writers need a scenario where Lisa had “problems that were beyond her fixing”.

Mr Trump’s election is not the only thing the show has foreseen.

In 2010, they predicted Bengt Holmström from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology would win the Nobel Prize for Economics in 2016 — which he did, for his work on contract theory and government versus private ownership.

This post originally appeared on ABC News.


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