It’s not unusual for Stephen King to terrify millions. But this time, the horror legend isn’t conjuring monsters or haunted hotels — he’s predicting a future where Donald Trump’s most loyal supporters erase their own history.
The 77-year-old novelist told the Sunday Times that Trump’s base, so steadfast today, will eventually disavow their role in putting the twice-elected president in power.
“There’s a story about the home run that was heard around the world,” King said, referring to Bobby Thomson’s famous 1951 baseball shot. “There are… tens of thousands of people who will say, ‘I saw Bobby Thomson hit that home run,’ and there were only, like, 5,000 people in the stands that day.
“So I think the opposite is true [with Trump]. Twenty or 30 years down the line, when I’ll be dead and you’ll be old, I think a lot of people are going to say, ‘Well, I never voted for Trump.’”
The comments strike at the heart of Trump’s political legacy: whether his presidency will endure as a proud badge of loyalty or a scar many wish to forget.
The White House wasted no time striking back. “Since Stephen has spent so long writing fiction, it’s understandable that he’d have no grasp on reality,” spokeswoman Abigail Jackson told Fox News Digital, framing King’s prediction as yet another example of out-of-touch Hollywood liberalism.
The rebuke follows years of tension between King — author of Carrie, The Shining, and It — and the Trump movement. The Maine-born writer has been one of Trump’s most consistent celebrity critics, unleashing a steady stream of barbed commentary on X (formerly Twitter). His latest broadside came as no surprise, but the bite of his prophecy — that Trumpism may one day become a source of personal shame — hit a raw nerve.
In his Sunday Times interview, King also turned his ire toward immigration enforcement, likening ICE operations to scenes ripped from dystopian fiction. “Nobody would have believed where we are today, with Gestapo agents in the street,” he said. “They call themselves ICE, but they’re basically guys that are armed, they are wearing masks, they have huge amounts of money to spend and they are everywhere.”
King argued that if he had written such a scenario in the 1960s, it would have been published only as allegory — a modern-day Animal Farm. The fact that it now reads as contemporary news, he suggested, is what makes it all the more chilling.
Trump’s aides, however, cast King as melodramatic and detached. Their counterattack reflects the administration’s broader strategy: to dismiss cultural figures who openly challenge Trump as elite entertainers out of touch with ordinary Americans.
Still, King acknowledged the complicated reality that many of his readers are Trump loyalists. “I’m aware of it,” he admitted. “There’s never been, you know, an organized boycott.” Yet, he added, silence was not an option. “I feel I have an obligation to say what I think and be clear about it. It’s a question, like the song says, ‘Which side are you on?’”
That song, a classic protest anthem made famous by Pete Seeger, underscores King’s view that politics today is not a gray zone but a battlefield of moral clarity.
The clash between the horror master and the White House reveals something larger: a cultural war over memory, history, and denial. Trump’s critics argue his policies will be judged harshly by future generations. His defenders insist the president is restoring America’s greatness.
But King’s haunting forecast suggests another possibility — that in decades to come, Trump’s voters won’t be defending him at all. They’ll be insisting they never cast a ballot for him in the first place.
For now, the horror writer and the president remain locked in a public feud that feels almost scripted. The question is whether King’s prophecy will age like one of his timeless novels — or be dismissed as a political ghost story.
