‘The Simpsons’ Showrunner Fires Back Over Show’s Trump ‘Prediction Fail’

Showrunner of The Simpsons Matt Selman has slammed false claims that the cartoon predicted Saturday’s assassination attempt on Donald Trump.

Fake images purporting to be from the long-running series began making the rounds online, following the attack at a Trump rally in Butler, Pennsylvania.

Gunman Thomas Crooks hit the former president in the ear. Trump was quickly removed from the stage by Secret Service agents and assessed at a local hospital. A representative for the Republican later said Trump was “fine.” One man died in the shooting and two other rally attendees were critically wounded.

The doctored images replicate The Simpsons’ iconic animation style. Sitting side-by-side as a collage, the first picture shows Trump speaking at a podium, while the second image shows the politician lying dead in a casket. A plaque behind the coffin reads “R.I.P. Donald Trump, 1946 – 2024.”

According to a Reuters fact check, the fake scenes first went viral in 2017. However, the images have resurfaced on social media since the attack.

One poster to reshare the images was X user kira (@kirawontmiss).

“This is the first time I’ve seen a Simpsons prediction fail,” the poster said on the social network, formerly known as Twitter, along with a crying face emoji.

In response to the fake The Simpsons scenes circulating the internet, Selman told Reuters: “The image of Donald Trump in a coffin never appeared on The Simpsons. It is doctored.”

Selman continued to hit out at trolls spreading the image, telling TMZ on Tuesday: “Anyone who thinks The Simpsons would include such horrifying content on a family TV show doesn’t really watch the show or have any understanding of The Simpsons at all.”

The idea that The Simpsons can predict the future has been a running joke online for several years. The show has been on the air for more than three decades, with a number of real-world events replicating storylines from the cartoon.

Although coincidences, the animation has correctly predicted Super Bowl winners on three occasions—the Washington Redskins 1992 victory against the Buffalo Bills, the Dallas Cowboys 1993 win, and when the San Francisco 49ers beat the San Diego Chargers in 1995.

The show also joked about Disney purchasing 20th Century Fox in 1998’s Season 10 episode When you Dish Upon a Star, which became a reality in 2019. In the 1995 Season 7 episode Home Sweet Homediddly-Dum-Doodily, Bart’s friend Milhouse gets sick after playing with a monkey, which some people connected to the Monkey Pox outbreak in 2022.

The Simpsons joked about autocorrect long before the software became a smartphone staple, while in 2013, thieves were caught stealing grease from a New York City restaurant, just like Homer did in the 1998 episode Lard of the Dance.