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Debunked: Did ‘The Simpsons’ Predict the Death of President Donald Trump?
‘The Simpsons’ predicted a number of world events and an internet rumor said the show predicted the death of Donald Trump. Veuer’s Nick Cardona unravels the myth.
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The claim: ‘The Simpsons’ episode predicted Harris’ Inauguration Day outfit
Shortly after Joe Biden and Kamala Harris were sworn in as president and vice president, fans of ‘The Simpsons’ took to social media to claim that the program once again predicted a moment before it actually took place.
The series has previously been attributed to predictions of Super Bowl, a World Cup final, Donald Trump’s presidency and Disney holding 21st Century Fox. According to online reports, the program could be a prediction of the outfit the vice president wore during her swearing-in.
“Purple suit? Pearl earrings and necklace ?! The Simpsons did it again !!!!!” reads a January 21 Facebook post with hundreds of shares. “Do you predict the election results in 2020?” Included in the post are images of Lisa Simpson and Harris, both wearing a purple outfit and a pearl necklace.
Another user shared a similar version of the meme and wrote: “At this point, I think the authors / creators of this program were time travelers !!”
USA TODAY directed both Facebook users for comment.
Fact check: Image of ‘Simpsons’ character doctored to mimic Capitol rioters
In Episode, Harris is not mentioned
The image of Lisa Simpson seen in the reports comes from the episode “Bart to the Future” which was originally aired on March 19, 2000. In the episode, Lisa is president and talks to her staff about the budget crisis she inherited from President Donald Trump. .
In the episode, Lisa is wearing a purple pantsuit and pearls, similar to the outfit Harris wore on Inauguration Day. However, this is not proof that the program predicted her outfit.
Harris started working at the Alameda County District Attorney’s Office in 1990 and was only elected to public office in 2003 – three years after the ‘Simpsons’ episode aired – when she was elected District Attorney in the Associated Press. San Francisco.
The “Bart to the Future” section makes no specific mention of Harris’ name or background.
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The purple outfit and pearls
The purple suit Lisa wears as president is likely a coincidence, as politicians, according to Insider, have historically worn purple to symbolize duality and women’s suffrage.
American women’s voting colors of purple, white, and yellow stood for loyalty, purity, and hope. Some also speculated that Harris’ purple outfit was a nod to Shirley Chisholm, the first black woman to be elected to Congress, US reports.
On January 20, there was also the Democratic presidential candidate and former first lady Hillary Clinton, who wears purple on January 20. “send a little symbolic message that we must come together.”
Clinton also wore purple when she gave her concession speech in 2016 to be dual, saying she would have worn white if she had won the election, according to Vogue.
Harris’ Inauguration Day pearls are, according to the New York Times, the symbol of her wife’s care, Alpha Kappa Alpha.
The first female vice president has worn a pearl necklace on many occasions: when she studied at Howard, interviewed Brett Kavanaugh during his nomination hearing in the Supreme Court, she was sworn into Congress, Vice President Mike Pence discussed and when she shared her COVID-19 vaccine received, The Times reported.
Fact check: Meme with images of Biden, Trump inaugurations draw false comparison
Years of alleged predictions
This is not the first time that social media users have claimed that ‘The Simpsons’ predicted the future.
Snopes has dismissed dozens of false allegations of predictions from ‘The Simpsons’ over the years, noting that there are more than 31 seasons and 600 episodes of the show, which creates many opportunities to make coincidences appear.
In an interview with The New York Times in 2018, executive producer Al Jean said: “The Simpsons” episodes are aired a year after they are produced and ‘it’s just a kind of thinking framework that we think one year ahead. “Jean told the Times he predicted people ‘would make too many of our big predictions’.
The Times reported that a proposed concept by Harvard mathematicians Frederick Mosteller and Persi Diaconis’ could be a possible factor for the predictions, called ‘Methods for studying coincidences’. “The Simpsons” is the longest TV series in history and the 1989 article by the mathematicians reads: “With a big enough sample, any outrageous thing can happen.”
Stephanie Gillis, another author of ‘The Simpsons’, told the BBC in 2019: ‘We’re kind of futurologists by writing ten months in advance, so we’re trying to guess what’s going to happen.’
USA TODAY earlier denied allegations that an episode of the program predicted the January 6 riots at the Capitol.
Fact check: Attendance at Biden’s inauguration was limited by the COVID-19 pandemic
Our rating: false
The claim that ‘The Simpsons’ predicted Harris’ Inauguration Day outfit years ago is FALSE, based on our research. Although the image of Lisa Simpson as president wearing purple is authentic, Harris is not mentioned in the episode, and many politicians wear purple to symbolize unity. Furthermore, the episode aired three years before Harris was elected to public office, and writers for the show said the content and predictions were made one year before the episode aired. Similar claims about predictions about ‘The Simpsons’ have been dropped.
Our sources for fact checking:
- YouTube, November 9, 2016, “Trump Presidency Predicted by ‘The Simpsons'”
- Associated Press, August 15, “‘Do something:’ Harris ‘rapid rise driven by call to action’
- Insider, January 20, “Kamala Harris, Hillary Clinton and Elizabeth Warren all wore purple for the inauguration day, probably as a sign of duality”
- USA Today, January 20, “Why does everyone wear purple during inauguration week?”
- Vogue, September 10, 2017, “The real reason Hillary Clinton carried press for her concession speech”
- The New York Times, January 19, “Kamala Harris has always worn pearls. Now, in Sisterhood, they will do too.”
- The New York Times, February 2, 2018, “‘The Simpsons’ predicted a lot. Most of it can be explained.”
- University of Chicago, December 1989, “Methods of Studying Coincidences”
- BBC, 19 July 2019, “The Simpsons: How the Writers of the Program Predict the Future”
- Snopes, 22 August 2019, ” The Simpsons’ did not predict it ”
- USA TODAY, January 12, “Fact check: Image of ‘Simpsons’ character doctored to mimic Capitol rioters”
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