16 years ago, The Simpsons predicted that Donald Trump would become the president of the United States.
The episode aired on March 19, 2000. It features Bart having a vision of the future where his sister, Lisa, has to fix the havoc created by former president Donald J. Trump. According to former The Simpsons writer Dan Greaney, the joke was “a warning to America.”
America’s turning point
Coincidentally, Lisa Simpson is shown in the episode as the first “straight female” president, which would draw some correlation with candidate Hillary Clinton. When the joke was picked up by the media, Trump was just starting to work in the primaries, where he still faced resistance and ended up becoming the GOP nominee for the presidential election.
“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,” stated Dan Greaney.
Greaney also emphasized that he perceived Trump as the fulfillment of the irrational part of American culture, which will lead the country to its lowest point, forcing the people to elect Lisa for president. This means that the situation envisioned by The Simpson’s writing team for the Trump presidency would be a complete disaster. Greaney suggests that Lisa needed everything to go awry, which is represented by Trump becoming president before her.
Most viewed Trump’s presidential election as a joke that just had to die at some point. But now it seems that the joke is on America, seeing that a businessman with no political experience has made itself the most powerful man in the western hemisphere.
A joke that went too far
Just like The Simpsons, another artist who brought a lot of laughs at Trump’s expense was Alec Baldwin, who portrayed the 45th President of the United States in Saturday Night Live. The 58-year-old actor went ahead and shared his thoughts on Twitter, which stated the need of focusing on each others’ families and health.
“The billionaire Republican businessman is close to winning the race and world markets are crashing. He’s all yours, America. He’s all yours,” wrote Alec Baldwin on his Twitter account.
On the other hand, Stephen Baldwin, Alec’s younger brother, has been an outspoken supporter of Donald Trump and cherished the moment the election results came in. Alec even referenced Stephen in one of his Trump impersonations after the third presidential debate. Stephen commented on his brother’s impersonation of the Republican candidate that, even if Alec managed to copy Trump’s voice, he was getting “a little too nasty.”
The SNL were just for laughs and they had a clear bias toward Clinton, played by Kate McKinnon, but not even mainstream prime time shows were able to steer the voting incentive of frustrated Americans who feel it is the time for a change.
Donald Trump will take office in January, and with a Republican majority in Congress, we will have to wait and see if he can abide by his promises and proposals, such as keeping a database exclusively for Muslims, sending Clinton to jail, and deporting every undocumented person in the United States.
Source: Hollywood Reporter