The Simpsons EP Addresses Making Show’s Biggest Political Statement Ever With Donald Trump List

During this year’s annual Treehouse of Horror episode, The Simpsons made the biggest political statement in its 32-year run. In the intro of the episode, when Homer was at the voting booth trying to decide which president to vote for, Lisa popped in to remind of everything that has happened over the last four years. Suddenly, a long list of actions by President Donald Trump scrolled up the screen, in the hopes of proving to Homer that he shouldn’t be re-elected. There’s even a bit where Homer thinks about what could happen if a new president isn’t elected, which features a fully apocalyptic version of Springfield in January 2021.

The Simpsons has long remained mostly in the middle when it comes to politics, consistently making fun of all sorts of varying political views. This scene breaks tradition and makes a firm statement in regards to the coming election. In a conversation with Give Me My Remote, Simpsons EP Al Jean talked about the decision.

“We have the most polarizing president there’s ever been,” Jean explained. “When we started 30 years ago, I had some conservative leanings and I thought that you wanted to be even-handed. It’s just things have gotten pushed so crazily — and this is just my opinion, not the show’s — but Trump has been engaged in so much illegal activities as documented by the New York Times, you just go, oh this is crazy. No president in my life has violated policy like this; no president had a rally at the White House. You can’t be even-handed when the subject at hand is not, that’s my view.”

Most of that scene was written a year ago, but the creative team continued to add to the list throughout 2020. They also added masks to most people in the scene after the onset of the pandemic, though Homer doesn’t wear one.

“Obviously, we didn’t know about the pandemic, so then we added that everybody’s wearing a mask, except Homer,” he added. “The masks, we had those put in April — we guessed that would be what things would look like around November, but most of it, ironically, was written about a year ago.”

You can watch the full scene from The Simpsons at the top of the page.