Dan Greaney, a longtime comedy writer associated with , has announced that he is entering the 2028 race as what he describes as a “progressive Republican”.
Greaney made the announcement through an video posted on Tuesday. In the clip, he appeared wearing a robe, a grey beard and a wig while declaring that “Judgment Day is here” before formally launching his campaign.
“I’m just a self-proclaimed prophet…” he said in the video, before adding that he had attended law school, graduated and passed the bar exam.
The writer then removed the costume and said, “Screw it, I can be a politician.”
“I’m running for president. My platform: America for all. Let’s do this,” he added.
Greaney is among the early public figures to announce a presidential campaign more than two years before the next US election cycle formally begins.
Who is Dan Greaney?
Dan Greaney is best known as a comedy writer and television producer who worked on several major American entertainment projects, including The Simpsons, The Office and Borat.
The 60-year-old graduated from Harvard University and later attended Harvard Law School.
According to his LinkedIn profile, Greaney previously worked as an attorney at Proskauer, Rose, Goetz & Mendelsohn for nearly three years before moving into television writing.
He later joined The Simpsons as a writer during Seasons 7 to 11 and became associated with one of the show’s most widely discussed episodes involving a future Donald Trump presidency.
Greaney is also the co-founder of Bailiwik, an online community platform, and currently lives in California.
Why is he called the ‘Simpsons prophet’?
Over the years, The Simpsons has gained a massive online reputation for appearing to predict future global events.
Among the most widely discussed examples is the Season 11 episode titled “Bart to the Future”, which aired in 2000.
In the episode, Bart Simpson sees a future where his sister Lisa becomes President of the United States. During one scene, Lisa tells her staff: “As you know, we’ve inherited quite a budget crunch from President Trump.”
Years later, after Donald Trump became US president in 2016, the episode resurfaced online and was widely described by viewers as a prediction.
At the time the episode aired, Trump had briefly run for president in the 2000 election as a Reform Party candidate before ending his campaign on February 14 that year.
The episode itself premiered roughly one month later, on March 19, 2000.
Speaking to The Hollywood Reporter in 2016, Greaney explained the reasoning behind the storyline.
“The important thing is that Lisa comes into the presidency when America is on the ropes, and that is the condition left by the Trump presidency,” he said.
“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 further told the publication that making Trump president “just seemed like the logical last stop before hitting bottom.”
“It was pitched because it was consistent with the vision of America going insane,” he added.
What is Dan Greaney’s political platform?
Greaney describes himself as a “progressive Republican”, a phrase he also uses in his Instagram bio.
On his campaign website, he wrote, “The Republican establishment empowered Trump, the Democrats failed to stand up to him or for us, so I’m not leaving it in their hands.”
His platform is broadly divided into two categories — “restoring democracy” and “rebuilding America”.
According to details shared on his campaign website, Greaney supports expanding the US Supreme Court from nine to 13 justices, strengthening rule-of-law protections and reducing the influence of money in politics through transparency legislation.
He also backs a constitutional amendment aimed at overturning Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, the 2010 Supreme Court ruling that allowed unlimited independent political spending by corporations and labour unions.
His wider agenda additionally includes universal healthcare proposals, a Green New Deal initiative and measures focused on improving housing affordability.
According to Federal Election Commission data, Greaney formally filed his candidacy on April 19.
