No, Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain did not predict a Donald Trump presidency

This article is more than one year old.
Published on October 16, 2018 at 22:52
Updated on October 16, 2018 at 22:53
2 min read
By Marisha GOLDHAMER

With the US midterm election less than a month away, social media posts claiming late-Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain predicted in 1993 that Donald Trump would be elected president are making the rounds. Posts quoting Cobain first went viral in 2016, but there is no evidence that the popular musician ever said such a thing.

"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," starts a quote supposedly said by Cobain in 1993. It concludes, "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."

Screenshot taken on October 16, 2018 of the Kurt Cobain meme circulating in 2018

The quote has been shared repeatedly on Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest, but never with any attribution as to where or exactly when it was said by Cobain.

The latest iteration is a meme including a black-and-white photo of Cobain during Nirvana’s famous MTV Unplugged performance in 1993. Nowhere in that performance does Cobain speak the quote.

In August 2016, fact-checking site Snopes reported that the hoax originated on a Facebook page called Trump Train.

Screenshot taken on October 16, 2018 of the viral meme posted on Facebook in 2016

In another sign that the quote is likely fabricated, the earliest version of the meme misspelled Cobain’s first name as Curt rather than Kurt.

A recent debunk of the meme appeared in August 2018 when Danny Goldberg, who was one of Nirvana’s managers when Cobain was alive, wrote in The Nation, “I know that the quote is not only made up but it is also a grotesque perversion of Kurt’s beliefs.”

While known to speak out against homophobia, a 2017 Rolling Stone magazine compilation of 12 great quotes from Cobain does not include broader statements on politics.

A Google search of the quote from before July 2016 only produced only two results: a page ranking blogs on Cobain which is no longer online and a page of Cobain memes.

Screenshot of a Google search of the quote falsely attributed to Kurt Cobain

There were no search results from during the tumultuous life of the grunge singer who died by suicide at age 27 in April 1994.

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