Kurt Cobain Predicted Trump Presidency in 1993-Incorrect Attribution!
Summary of eRumor:
Late Nirvana front man Kurt Cobain predicted in 1993 that his generation would “surprise everyone” by electing someone like Donald Trump president.
The Truth:
There’s no record of Kurt Cobain uttering this quote, or predicting that Donald Trump would become president one day.
That rumor started in August 2016 after the “Trump Train” Facebook page posted a meme showing a picture of Kurt Cobain with a quote that he supposedly uttered in 1993:
In the end, I believe my generation will surprise everyone. We already know that both political parties are playing both sides from the middle and we’ll elect a true outsider when we fully mature.
I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s not a business tycoon who can’t be bought and who does what’s right for the people. Someone like Donald Trump as crazy as that sounds.
Again, we couldn’t find any record of Cobain actually making that comment. We did find one example of Cobain talking generally about his generation and politics, but he didn’t predict a Trump presidency in it. Rather, Cobain vented frustration about the “apathy” his generation felt toward politics:
My generation’s apathy. I’m disgusted with it. I’m disgusted with my own apathy too, for being spineless and not always standing up against racism, sexism and all those other -isms the counterculture has been whining about for years.
As far as we can tell, Cobain never predicted a Trump presidency. That’s why we’re calling this one “incorrect attribution.”