In 2000, “The Simpsons” writer/producer Dan Greaney added a joke to an episode predicting a Donald Trump presidency.
Now, as Trump nears the halfway point of his second term in office, Greaney prepares for his own presidential run.
“Screw it, I can be a politician,” Greaney said in an announcement video. “I’m running for president. My platform: America for all. Let’s do this.”
Greaney announced his candidacy in a two-part Instagram video, dressing himself in the guise of a “self-proclaimed prophet” to talk about everything he has “foretold” about the current Trump era of politics. He then ripped this costume off, revealing a suit underneath and announcing himself as a progressive Republican candidate.
“The United States was founded on a transcendental insight: that all men are created equal,” Greaney said in the video. “But now, Trump, Vance, the billionaires, careerists and cowards in both parties have turned their backs on it. It’s money, power and security for them, but not for you. In America, the government is supposed to work for everyone. Democracy for all, accountability for all, prosperity for all.” You can watch the full video below.
The episode that did the foreseeing is the 17th entry to the 11th season of “The Simpsons,” titled “Bart to the Future.” Set 30 years in the future (at the time, 2030), the episode envisions a reality where Lisa Simpson has become President of the United States, while Bart is an unsuccessful aspiring rock musician.
“As you know, we’ve inherited quite a budget crunch from President Trump,” Lisa says in the episode. “How bad is it, Secretary Van Houten?”
“We’re broke,” Milhouse responds.
Though Greaney worked on numerous episodes of “The Simpsons” as a writer/producer, he acknowledged this joke as one of his most significant pop cultural contributions, riffing on a Trump presidency 16 years before it actually came to pass. At the time he wrote the gag, Greaney acknowledged, he had no political aspirations to speak of.
“When I saw that photo of Trump surrounded by tech billionaires and CEOs at the inauguration, I was disgusted into action. I realized that nobody was going to save us, and that self-respect required me to at least try to do something,” Greaney said in a statement. “I used what I had, my claim to fame as the writer of the episode of ‘The Simpsons’ that predicted Trump, to predict his downfall. This was an expression of both conviction and my deepest values.”
