Simpsons writer: Donald Trump president episode that aired in 2000 'was a warning to America'

A Simpsons episode that aired in March 2000 and predicted Donald Trump would become president was intended as a warning, its writer has said.

The episode, Bart to the Future, imagines a world where Lisa Simpson has just been elected to the Oval Office following the abysmal presidency of Donald Trump.

Lisa states in the episode: "As you know, we've inherited quite a budget crunch from President Trump."

The episode's writer Dan Greaney told the Hollywood Reporter that "it was a warning to America", adding that the imagined Trump presidency "just seemed like the logical last stop before hitting bottom. It was pitched because it was consistent with the vision of America going insane".

However, 16 years later and the show's prediction could become a reality – with Trump currently in the lead for the Republican nomination.

The idea of Trump becoming president of the US was something Greaney said he used as he wanted to imagine Lisa tasked with solving a difficult problem.

"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," he said.

"The Simpsons has always kind of embraced the over the top side of American culture... and [Trump] is just the fulfilment of that."

It is not the first time something written on a Simpsons episode has come to pass, with video calling and games such as Farmville shown on the show years before they were officially invented.

Some conspiracy theorists also claim the show predicted the Ebola outbreak, 9/11 and the war in Syria.