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The Simpsons has earned a reputation for seemingly predicting major historical and political events after over 30 years on the air. But a “doctored” still from the show recently went viral for implying the Fox animated series also predicted Donald Trump’s death.
After a 20-year-old gunman took aim at the former president at a Pennsylvania rally this past weekend, an image that appeared to be pulled from a Simpsons episode showed Trump in a casket with a plaque that reads, “R.I.P. Donald Trump, 1946 – 2024.”
The image went viral on social media, causing some users to believe The Simpsons had predicted Trump’s death.
Executive producer and showrunner Matt Selman swiftly confirmed to Reuters that the image is not real after it began circulating. “The image of Donald Trump in a coffin never appeared on The Simpsons. It is doctored,” Selman said in a statement.
He also condemned the misinformation, telling TMZ, “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.”
Per Reuters, the image has been circulating the internet since at least 2017. The outlet notes that “predictive programming” is “a common theme in misinformation narratives” that “refers to the idea that government actors or other powerful forces use books, movies, and TV shows to condition the population into accepting future crisis events that they secretly planned themselves.”
The Simpsons may have predicted Trump’s presidency among other interesting cultural moments, but Selman maintains these are just “coincidences.”
After the show was recently accused of also predicting Sean “P Diddy” Combs’ legal troubles, Selman told TMZ: “In the current era of digital misinformation, The Simpsons ‘predictions’ (or, more accurately, ‘coincidences’) have become meaningless. Any goofball can whip up an AI image based on a current event and say ‘The Simpsons predicted it!’ — and decent-but-easily-misled folks will believe it because they so very want it to be true.”
Speaking of coincidences, a Season 7 episode of The Simpsons was recently pulled from the U.K.’s Channel 4 the day after the shooting because it alluded to political assassinations.
The episode, titled “Lisa the Iconoclast,” showed Lisa Simpson trying to educate her fellow Springfield residents on the town’s namesake: A pirate named Jebediah Springfield who looked down on the townspeople and attempted to assassinate George Washington.
The episode also featured a scene where a law enforcement officer takes aim at Lisa from a nearby rooftop while she’s speaking at a podium, bearing an eerie resemblance to the assassination attempt on Trump.
Trump appears to be recovering from the shooting. He is set to speak at the Republican National Convention Thursday (July 18), where he recently made a public appearance with a bandage on his ear, where he was injured during the shooting.
