The Simpsons predicted Donald Trump's presidency 16 years ago as a "warning to America"

A joke about Donald Trump being president in a 16-year-old episode of The Simpsons doesn't look quite so far-fetched anymore. In fact, writer Dan Greaney said the now plausible prediction was "a warning".

The episode, Bart to the Future, sees Lisa Simpson take office where she tells her staff: "As you know, we've inherited quite a budget crunch from President Trump."

"It was a warning to America," writer Dan Greaney told The Hollywood Reporter of the episode, which first aired on March 19th 2000.

"That just seemed like the logical last stop before hitting bottom. It was pitched because it was consistent with the vision of America going insane," he added.

See the line in the clip below at 2mins 21secs

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lxjM1yCcqTQ

It continues to look likely that Trump will be this year's Republican presidential nominee – a step closer to a reality that Greaney once predicted would be America as it's lowest point: "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 continues to be involved in the show as a consulting producer and he added: "The Simpsons has always kind of embraced the over the top side of American culture … and [Trump] is just the fulfillment of that."