- Episode called Bart to the Future includes vision of the U.S. in 2030
- Lisa Simpsons has just been elected president - to succeed Trump
- Nation's financial ruin due to Trump policies is revealed
- In contrast to his 2016 rhetoric, U.S. is shown taking handouts from China
- Lisa has to institute massive tax hikes in order to dig America out of its hole
- Simpsons has 'predicted' world events before, including Ebola, the discovery of the Higgs-Boson particle and the Arab Spring
Published:
23:05 EST, 9 August 2015
|
Updated:
00:44 EST, 10 August 2015
Donald Trump's bid for the White House and ascendancy in the polls has surprised many - but The Simpsons called it 15 years ago.
The cartoon
foretold a Trump presidency in a surreal episode where Bart is given a
window into the future - and found a country brought to its knees by
financial mismanagement and a crime wave ushered in by The Donald.
In
Bart to the Future, first aired in March 2000, a fortune teller gave
Bart a glimpse of 2030 - just weeks after Trump vacated the White House.
Scroll down for video
Last, best hope: In the old Simpsons episode, Lisa Simpson is elected to
succeed Trump in the White House - and inherits an unmanageable level
of national debt
The
episode's alternate universe reveals that Trump, who will be 84 in 2030,
left the country in an impossible amount of debt, and reliant on
foreign aid from Europe and China.
This
sorry state of affairs is the exact opposite of Trump's current
campaign promise to 'Make America Great Again', and stop 'losing' to
other nations.
The
recently-unearthed episode is the latest in a series of eerie Simpsons
predictions, in which the show has foreseen the Arab Spring, the Ebola
crisis and the discovery of the Higgs-Boson particle.
In
the episode's vision of the future, America is also at the mercy of an
army of genetically-enhanced thugs, brought about by Trump programs
designed to help the nation's youth which dramatically backfired.
Great Again? According to a graph by finance whizz Millhouse Van Houten,
Trump's administration brought the nation to financial ruin, and the
ignominious position of accepting handouts from China
The only person who can save the shattered United States is none other than the newly-elected President Lisa Simpson.
Despite
her lofty ambitions to 'refill the oceans' and build the world's
biggest book-mobile, her biggest task becomes rescuing the nation from
its crippling debt.
An
exchange from Lisa's first cabinet meeting, meeting a balding Millhouse
in charge of the nation's finances, starts with a sobering financial
summary.
Lisa says: 'As you know, we've inherited quite a budget crunch from President Trump. How bad is it, Secretary Van Houten?'
He holds up a graph showing a financial death-plunge and replies: 'We're broke'.
Up-to-date: The Simpsons has mocked Trump more recently, too. In a clip
shown above, Homer gets sucked into his vortex-like hairdo
Lisa later
asks whether there is any money to fund her campaign pledges - to which
another official replies: 'No. We borrowed from every country in the
world.'
Lisa is later forced to announce an enormous tax hike in an attempt to right Trump's wrongs, which kills her approval ratings.
It also does nothing to placate the nation's creditors.
But
the nation is eventually saved by Bart, a failed musician in the future
vision, who uses his well-practiced ability dodging debt repayments to
win the United States a reprieve.
As
well as its prediction of Trump's presidential ambitions, which he has
entertained since at least the 1980s, The Simpsons has given The Donald
its signature treatment more recently.
Not
long after his controversial campaign launch, where he called Mexican
immigrants 'rapists' and 'drug dealers', The Simpsons published a short
video featuring Homer and Trump in close quarters.
In the video Homer was slipped $50 by a campaign official to cheer on Trump at the launch, riffing on real-life allegations that The Donald had paid for support.
However,
overexcited fans shunted him right behind Trump as he made his way down
an escalator - prompting Homer to get sucked inside his
much-commented-upon hairdo, where he found other lost souls including
Amelia Earhart.
As soon as he was expelled from Trump's hair-vortex, Homer was collared by security guards and dumped back in Springfield.
THROUGH THE YELLOW CRYSTAL BALL: OTHER WORLD EVENTS ASTONISHINGLY PREDICTED BY THE SIMPSONS
A Trump presidential campaign will hardly be the first event The Simpsons apparently predicted from afar.
The show has called world events correctly before, in fields as diverse as politics, medicine and theoretical physics.
In 1997 an episode apparently predicted the Ebola outbreak in early 2015 which devastated West Africa.
Uncanny: In a 1997 episode of The Simpsons, the show's creators appear to hint at the recent African Ebola epidemic
In
the episode Lisa's Sax, a sick Bart is given a book to read to keep him
occupied at home. However, despite her intentions to soothe her son,
Marge hands over a volume entitled Curious George and the Ebola Virus.
The
cover features a sicken monkey - the animal which carries Ebola. Frames
of the cover are followed moments later by Bart gesturing to a drawing
of piled-up bodies.
A 1998 episode - The Wizard of Evergreen Terrace - got science buffs talking years later, when it emerged Homer Simpson had produced a decent approximation of a theory related to the Higgs-Boson 'God particle'.
Genius?
An episode from 1998 shows Homer Simpson producing an apparently
functional approximation of a theory for the mass of a Higgs-Boson
particle
One
experienced particle physicist said that a complicated equation Homer
scribbled on a chalkboard seemed to pre-empt the discovery by experts at
CERN.
And Matt Groening's gang also apparently foresaw the political downfall of Syria, brought about by the Arab Spring.
A 2001 Simpsons episode - New Kids on the Blecch, shows clips of a war in an unspecified Middle Eastern country.
Some of the U.S. enemies depicted in the show were using a jeep branded with a flag used by nobody at the time it was aired - but which more than a decade came to be used by a rebel group in Syria.
Read more:
- Donald Trump 'hired ACTORS for Trump Towers presidential campaign launch' | Daily Mail Online
- How The Simpsons predicted US Ebola outbreak in 1997 | Daily Mail Online
- The Simpsons 1998 episode predicts Higgs Boson's mass 14 years before CERN | Daily Mail Online
- Homerland security: Egyptian TV channel claims US secret service was behind civil war in Syria after finding image of opposition rebels' flag in a 2001 Simpsons episode | Daily Mail Online