Stephen King Wrote About Trump's Rise Decades Ago
Author Stephen King predicted Trump 40 years ago in “The Dead Zone.”
“I was sort of convinced that it was possible that a politician would arise who was so outside the mainstream and so willing to say anything that he would capture the imaginations of the American people,” he said.
King’s Greg Stillson was a real estate con man who became a political demagogue and sometimes wore a hard hat at his rallies.
“They take him as a joke at first because he has these rallies,” King explained. “Crazy stuff that nobody would possibly believe or so we thought, until Donald Trump came along.”
King said his worry at the time that he wrote “The Dead Zone” was that somebody like Greg Stillson might actually get elected and rise through the ranks, become President of the United States and start World War III. The book was published in 1979, with Martin Sheen playing Stillson in the movie adaptation. The story’s hero is a psychic who gained his powers after an accident.
Psychic powers are a recurring theme in King’s novels—prompting people to wonder if he predicted Trump’s presidency 40 years ago.
“I don’t think that I necessarily predicted Donald Trump when I wrote ‘The Dead Zone,’” King said. “I know that American voters have always had a real attraction to outsiders with the same kind of right-wing, America-first policy. And if that reminds people of Trump, I can’t be sorry because it was a character that I wrote.”
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