Did "The Simpsons" predict that President Donald Trump would take a picture with a glowing orb? No, that's not true: The image is from a short posted to the official Facebook account of "The Simpsons" after the real picture of Trump was taken. This "prediction" has been debunked since 2017.
The claim was made in a post (archived here) by the X account @Mubi_1713 on Oct. 8, 2026. The post included an image of Trump's glowing orb picture, along with another image that appeared to be an animation of the scene. The caption read:
Hey @grok, how simpsons predictions always become true?
This is what the post looked like on X at the time of writing:
(Image source: post by @Mubi_1713 on X.)
The original picture
During his first term in 2017, Trump took his first presidential trip to Saudi Arabia. On May 21, 2017, Trump (right) was shown with King Salman of Saudi Arabia (center) and Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi (left) as they touched a glowing orb to inaugurate the Global Center for Combating Extremist Ideology (archived here). A video (archived here) of the event from NBC News is embedded below:
Short video posted by 'Simpsons' featured image
The official Facebook account of "The Simpsons" published a special short (archived here) on May 26, 2017, shortly after footage of Trump at the summit was released. The video was titled "125 Days: Donald Trump makes one last try to patch things up with Comey" (archived here). The image in this fact check appears between the five- and seven-second marks of the parody video as a framed picture in a White House stairwell. A screenshot of the image from the video is included below:
(Image source: The Simpsons on Facebook.)
The full short as it appears on Facebook is embedded below:
Other fact checks
This claim was also investigated by Snopes and AFP Fact Check.
Lead Stories has debunked several claims related to "The Simpsons."
