He’s unlikely to be the candidate that staunch Springfield Republican Sideshow Bob would endorse (although Birch Barlow might), but Donald Trump is living large as the GOP frontrunner at the moment. A colossal fuss has been made about how The Simpsons predicted in 2000 that Lisa Simpson would one day succeed Trump in office, and now the man that presented us with that gag/eerie forecast is offering up some interesting insight into how the most orange contender in the race was pegged as an-ex president in a universe with a large population of yellow characters.
Dan Greaney, the man who wrote the season 11 episode, “Bart to the Future,” has previously provided a bit of chatter on the subject and in a fascinating interview with The Hollywood Reporter he talked about how the joke-turned-possible-reality came to be. He can’t quite remember who pitched the idea, but we sort of have Lisa to blame/thank (your call) for Trump’s time in animated office.
“The important thing is that Lisa comes into the presidency when America is on the ropes and that is the condition left by the Trump presidency,” Greaney tells THR. “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.”
There are those that would argue that the episode itself was beyond fixing, but THR says Greaney still stands by the little-loved offering. He’s also getting a kick out of the Trump moment’s time in the spotlight.
“I am tickled we are getting all this attention, but I don’t think it’s going to trigger this well-awaited re-evaluation of my episode that I was hoping for,” he says, laughing. “The Simpsons has always kind of embraced the over the top side of American culture … and [Trump] is just the fulfillment of that.”
Of course, this year The Simpsons also elected to directly address Trump’s campaign and the entire Presidential candidate field with an all-out slobberknocker. To be honest, the make believe brawl might be less ridiculous than chunks of the race itself.
(Via The Hollywood Reporter)
