Last week, Donald Trump was elected as the 45th president of the United States, and looking for someone to blame, people pointed to an episode of The Simpsons from 2000 that predicted the outcome.
Using Bart and his infamous chalkboard from the opening theme of the show, The Simpsons’ writers had a clear message about their opinion on the results of the election: being right sucks. In the original episode, Bart is shown an image of what his life will look like in the future. While he’s not as successful as he would have liked to be, his sister Lisa has just become president and is forced to contend with the financial crisis that her predecessor — President Trump — left for her.
The Simpsons updates its 2000 prediction of a Trump Presidency... #TheSimpsons pic.twitter.com/Myf5rYb9Dj
— The Simpsons (@TheSimpsons) November 14, 2016
In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Simpsons writer Dan Greaney called the episode “a warning to America” and referred to it as “the logical last stop before hitting bottom.”
“What we needed was for Lisa to have problems that were beyond her fixing, that everything went as bad as it possibly could, and that's why we had Trump be president before her,” Greaney said.
Although The Simpsons writers didn’t do anything else with the episode, fans seem pretty content with the update, if replies to the tweet are anything to go by.
The Simpsons airs Sundays at 8:30 p.m. ET on Fox.