The Death of Donald Trump

There was no shortage of comedians who immediately joked about the possibility (and the wish) that the current president of the United States would lose the battle with the virus

For the past 31 years, the TV series “The Simpsons” has shown a whole bunch of predictions about the future, rising from their mischievous perspective. The list is unbelievable. Among other things, they predicted the International Federation of Association Football corruption scandal. In an episode in 2010, Milhouse bet that the economist Bengt R. Holmstrom would win the Nobel Prize and six years later, he did. They also intuited that someday there would be computer watches, and that Greece would go into bankruptcy. But the best-known prediction took place in an episode in 2000 in which Bart Simpson traveled into the future and saw how in 2030, his sister Lisa will be president of the United States, standing in for none other than Donald Trump.

What would have seemed to be impossible and absurd has come to pass. In fact, these correct guesses confirm that the show’s screenwriters have not failed to observe society from a point of view that is critical and mocking, but above all realistic. Now they have announced that in the episode to be aired on Oct. 17 in the United States, Lisa gives 50 reasons not to vote for Trump this coming Nov. 3. In this case, however, they did not need to make anything up, because what they present are Trump’s own idiotic opinions.

The success of “The Simpsons” is a good example of a paradox in the United States: a society that is frequently conservative and traditional, but where freedom of expression is sacred. We also saw it with Trump’s COVID-19 infection. There was no shortage of comedians who immediately joked about the possibility (and the wish) that he would die. On “Saturday Night Live,” for example, comedian Chris Rock said: “President Trump’s in the hospital from COVID and you know, I just want to say my heart goes out to COVID.”

Another comedian, Michael Che, had this to say about Trump’s recovery: “Yay. … It kind of feels like when there’s a car crash and the only survivor is the drunk driver.” So, no mercy, but as the same comedian also said at another time: “If the situation were reversed and it was Biden who got sick, Trump would 100 percent be at a maskless rally tonight getting huge laughs doing an impression of Biden on a ventilator.”