Did an image of Donald Trump in a coffin drawn in the style of animated series "The Simpsons" predict the assasination attempt on Donald Trump in Pennsylvania on July 13, 2024? No, that's not true: the image in question never appeared in a "Simpsons" episode. It has been online for several years and has been debunked by Lead Stories and other fact checkers as early as 2017.
The image went viral again via a post on X (archived here) and a post on Instagram (archived here) shortly after the July 13, 2024 assassination attempt against Donald Trump in Pennsylvania. This is what the posts looked like:
(Source: Twitter screenshot taken on Sun Jul 14 09:54:23 2024 UTC)
(Source: Instagram screenshot taken on Sun Jul 14 09:54:43 2024 UTC)
Lead Stories has previously published two fact checks about the same image:
This fake "Simpsons" scene of Donald Trump in a coffin first appeared early in 2017 without any reference to the episode name or year that it allegedly aired. Back in 2017 it was determined that the faked "Simpsons" style artwork originated from a 4Chan post and had then spread in Spanish-language media. There was a YouTube video published on February 3, 2017, by the YouTube channel Badabun which explained the scene originated from 4Chan. The Badabun video promoted some technical errors as well, notably including the scene of Donald Trump on the escalator as an example of a prediction. That artwork was produced after the real-word escalator ride took place on June 16, 2015, on the day Donald Trump announced that he would be running for president.
Lead Stories' fact-check also noted the likely source material for the counterfeit Trump coffin image:
"The Simpsons" has its own Wiki with over 39,000 articles. The Donald Trump Page at Wikisimpsons has a listing of all the episodes in which Donald Trump has appeared or been mentioned. There is no reference to Donald Trump's death or a coffin in these episodes. There is, in episode #408, "Funeral for a Fiend" a funeral scene for Sideshow Bob that likely served as a model for the hoax image. The styling of the casket, the shape of the roses and even the church windows point to the reference used for the forged cartoon. The real image of Sideshow Bob's funeral has been turned to match the orientation of the other image.
Politifact also debunked the image in 2020 and so did Snopes in 2017.
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