The Simpsons may have predicted Ted Cruz’s controversial Mexico trip in 1993

Episode depicted Springfield mayor secretly on holiday while his city faced a crisis

Fans of The Simpsons are convinced that the show predicted Ted Cruz’s controversial trip to Mexico.

The Texas senator has come under fire in recent days for flying with his family on a holiday to Cancun, despite hundreds of thousands of Texans being left without electricity, heat or running water due to a weather emergency.

On Twitter, numerous Simpsons fans pointed out the similarities between Cruz’s response to the emergency and a 1993 episode of the long-running animated series.

In the scene, Springfield mayor Joe Quimby gives a television interview in which he claims to have cancelled holiday plans to help the city deal with a pandemic. In truth, however, Quimby is filming the press conference from a beach in the Bahamas.

“The Simpsons have done it again,” tweeted one fan, along with the clip from the episode.

Read more: The Simpsons predictions: 13 times the series seemed to predict the future

“Surely this has been said, but not abandoning your constituents to take a tropical vacation is such a comically low bar that it’s literally a Simpsons gag,” wrote podcaster Jesse Brenneman.

The Simpsons has long been credited with “predicting” the future. As well as joking about a Trump presidency nearly two decades before Trump was actually elected, a subplot in a 1993 episode of the show drew comparisons to the coronavirus pandemic last year.

A 1996 episode also featured an anthropomorphic amendment storming the Capitol building, a scene that would be echoed in January when Trump supporters attempted to storm the historic building.

Ted Cruz returns from Cancun on Thursday, and Mayor Quimby in a 1993 episode of The Simpsons ( (AP/Dan Christian Rojas/Disney))

Last month, fans also noticed that Kamala Harris’s wardrobe at her inauguration as vice president matched an outfit once worn on the show by Lisa Simpson. The episode in question took place in the future, with Lisa in the role of US president.

On Thursday (18 February), Cruz admitted the decision to travel to Cancun was a “mistake”, but that he was “trying to be a dad”.