Why The Simpsons turned Donald Trump away

By Caitlin Gibson

Donald Trump has always been quick to boast that he usually gets what he wants.

But when the real estate developer and TV celebrity once asked the producer of The Simpsons for the honour of a guest appearance on the long-running show - a coveted recognition for many celebrities and cultural icons - he was apparently turned down, according to the Wrap.

The Simpsons executive producer Al Jean recalled the episode during the show's panel at Comic-Con in San Diego on Saturday after an audience member asked if the series had ever turned down a celebrity who had asked to voice a character, the Wrap reported.

Jean paused for a moment before answering: "Let's just say he's the President of the United States."

Of course, that didn't stop Trump's likeness from appearing on the show.

He was famously depicted as the future president in a 2000 episode, "Bart to the Future," in which an adult Lisa Simpson inherits the presidency from Trump and struggles to fix the wreckage he left behind.

At the time, writer Dan Greaney told the Washington Post, the joke was meant to be absurdist, purely tongue-in-cheek.

"He seemed kind of lovable in the old days, in a blowhard way," Greaney said of Trump.

But after Trump announced his run for the presidency, "I see that in a much darker way," Greaney said.

Since Trump took office, The Simpsons has taken a starkly critical view of the 45th president. In recent episodes, Trump has been visited by the ghost of Richard Nixon, and the show's portrayal of Trump's first 100 days in office was particularly bleak.

During the panel on Saturday, The Simpsons creator Matt Groening made his thoughts on Trump explicitly clear when he led the Comic-Con crowd in a chant of "Lock him up! Lock him up!"

It was a pointed riff on the anti-Hillary Clinton "Lock her up!" refrain that dominated so many of Trump's campaign rallies.