The following is a list of real or historical people who have been portrayed as President of the United States in fiction, although they did not hold the office in real life. This is done either as an alternate history scenario, or occasionally for humorous purposes. Also included are actual US presidents with a fictional presidency at a different time and/or under different circumstances than the one in actual history.
P Sarah Palin In the time travel-themed card game Chrononauts, specifically the 2009 expansion pack The Gore Years, the player can cause Sarah Palin to become the first female President in 2008. This is a consequence of Al Gore winning the 2000 presidential election, as John McCain is the Republican nominee for 2004 and he selects Palin as his running mate (mirroring McCain's actual decision in 2008). This raises Palin's national profile enough to win the Republican primaries of 2008, before narrowly prevailing over Vice President Joe Lieberman in the general election.
Nancy Pelosi In the comic series The Boys, created by Garth Ennis and Darick Robertson, after Victor K. "Vic the Veep" Neuman, formerly Vice President to Robert "Dakota Bob" Shaefer, was killed by Homelander as part of his ultimately unsuccessful coup against the United States in issue #65, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi became Acting President in issue #66, serving until after the 2008 elections.
Mike Pence In a flashback episode of the Fox post-apocalyptic series The Last Man on Earth, Mike Pence is mentioned in news broadcasts as being the 46th President of the United States. During his presidency he creates the Federal Pandemic Agency in a last-ditch attempt to prevent the spread of the mysterious deadly virus sweeping across the planet. However, Pence himself eventually succumbs to the virus, and his entire line of succession is quickly eliminated by the virus along with nearly everyone else on earth. President in the television series Years and Years. Mike Pence wins the 2024 U.S. presidential election, succeeding Donald Trump after he won re-election in 2020. He becomes president at a time of heightened tensions with China, after President Trump authorized a nuclear strike against the Chinese artificial island Hong Sha Dao days before Pence had entered office. During his presidency the U.S. faces international sanctions after the nuclear attack, and the United Nations threaten to withdraw their headquarters from New York. Former President Trump is mentioned as still holding some influence in the Pence administration, with Pence being regarded as a puppet. Due to being isolated on the world stage, the U.S. and the Republican Party drift further to the right, with Roe v. Wade and Obergefell v. Hodges both being overturned and the speaking of Spanish being banned in public spaces by 2027 (in addition to Trump's likeness being carved into Mount Rushmore). In the anthology And the Last Trump Shall Sound by Harry Turtledove, James Morrow and Cat Rambo, Mike Pence succeeded Donald Trump as president in 2024 after his death during a second coronavirus pandemic. During his presidency, Roe v. Wade was overturned in 2026 with abortion being criminalized and thousands of women dying as a result of illegal procedures; concentration camps were established near the US-Mexican border to imprison migrants, illegal immigrants and political opponents; non-Christians including Jews, Muslims and Sikhs fell victim to fatal religious and racist attacks; and LGBTQ+ peoples were persecuted and eventually classified as sex offenders. Congress became a Republican-dominated rubber stamp, state autonomy in Democratic states was undermined with state governments being removed and replaced with right-wing puppets for non-compliance with federal orders, Christian fundamentalism was endorsed by the federal government, and news broadcasters including CNN and MSNBC became right-wing subsidiaries of Fox as part of restrictions on freedom of the press. Pence's vice president was Lindsey Graham. In The Breaking of Nations by Harry Turtledove, Pence unsuccessfully opposed the secession of the West Coast states of California, Washington and Oregon as Pacifica and the northeastern states of New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island and Vermont as Newtopia, the last states to be controlled by Democrats. And in The Purloined Republic by James Morrow, Pence managed to serve a third term as president by serving as Devin Nunes's running mate in 2032, whereupon Nunes resigned the presidency to allow Pence to succeed him, either sidestepping or manipulating the Twenty-second Amendment. Rick Santorum was appointed as his new Vice President. Pacifican porn star Polly Nightingale attempted to sabotage Pence's presidency by impersonating his spiritual advisor.
Frederic Courtland Penfield In The Land Leviathan by Michael MoorcockLand Leviathan on Fantastic Fiction Frederic Courtland Penfield becomes a nominal 'president' over a de facto, skeletal 'United States', in Washington, D.C. – in an alternate history world devastated by titanic wars and with the US having turned to violent racism an re-introduced Black Slavery. Penfield's capital has been surprisingly immune from bombing and missile attack, as the government had fled into subterranean shelters at the beginning of the Great War. Penfield's rule is challenged by rebellious Black slaves led by Paul Robeson.
Frances Perkins In Amerika Strikes Back! by Paul Lally, on December 8, 1941, Nazi Germany reveals its possession of secretly developed nuclear weapons, destroying Washington D.C. and Manhattan in a sudden devastating attack. President Roosevelt and most of his cabinet perish, along with Congress and the Supreme Court. With the federal government effectively decapitated, the US is thrown into chaos, each state acting on its own. Secretary of Labor Frances Perkins, sole survivor of the Executive Branch, is sworn as the first female President – an honor which she would have greatly liked to avoid. Germany threatens further attacks which would destroy Chicago, Miami, Pittsburgh and other major American cities. President Perkins has no choice but to give in and sign a Pact of Neutrality, the US obliging itself to stand aside as the Nazis take over the rest of the world. However, with President Perkins' tacit support General George Patton puts together an underground group called the "Sons of Liberty" and formulates a daring and desperate plot which may yet save something from the jaws of this colossal defeat.
Ross Perot Perot is president in the cartoon Eek! The Cat and voiced by Charlie Adler. In the Smiling Friends episode "Mr. President", main character Pim Pimling cites President Ross Perot as having won the 1996 United States presidential election as an example of an upset in the United States' political history.
George S. Patton President Patton, presumably George S., is mentioned in The Number of the Beast by Robert A. Heinlein. In reading an almanac from our universe, it is noted that Dwight D. Eisenhower served two terms but only one of them corresponded with his terms in the parallel universe, meaning that he either served from 1949 to 1957 or 1957–1965. In the novel Patton's Spaceship (part of the Timeline Wars series by John Barnes), General George Patton was one of the American commanders who in 1945 valiantly resisted the invading armies which Nazi Germany sent across the Atlantic, but were overwhelmed. After being defeated by Rommel's armored columns at the Second Battle of Gettysburg, Patton led the remnants of his forces in a fighting retreat all the way to the West Coast and embarked them on boats across the Pacific, meeting in Australia with Field Marshal Montgomery at the head of surviving British troops. The Nazis proceeded to establish a collaborator Nazi regime in the US, which between 1952 and 1960 murdered no less than 14,000,000 American citizens. A further German attack overwhelmed Australia, New Zealand and the Philippines, but Patton and other exile generals managed to hold together the Free Zone in much of East Asia, where all who continued to resist the Nazis congregated – Americans, British, Soviets, Chinese, French, Jews, Blacks and numerous other nationalities and ethnic groups – together with the country's own Vietnamese population. Hanoi became the political and military headquarters of the Free Zone, where Patton established a strong working partnership and personal friendship with the Vietnamese General Giap, while keeping contact by submarine with the anti-Nazi Resistance active in the US and other countries. In 1961 the Free Zone seemed on the verge of defeat, with a heavy German invasion sowing destruction at Singapore, one of its main bases, and the Germans deploying devastating new technologies. However, Edward Teller had been building up a secret Nuclear Program, based at the village of Điện Biên Phủ, while Wernher von Braun – who defected from the Nazis and came over to Patton's side – developed Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles. The Nazi spy satellite, launched from Cape Canavral, discovered the base and the Nazis launched a heavy attack on Điện Biên Phủ and were beaten off with difficulty. However, Teller obtained an unexpected plentiful source of Plutonium, making it possible for the Free Zone to launch its deadly surprise in the last moment before the Nazis could fully bring their own new weapons into play. ICBMs shot from Vietanam, loaded with hydrogen bombs, traveled around the world, destroyed Berlin and turned Germany into a radioactive wasteland. With the Nazis destroyed, their dependent Fascist regimes in various countries collapsed and underground groups took power. Patton, leading his forces to retake the United States, declared he would not use nuclear arms on American soil, but was intransigent in insisting that the 18,000,000 members of the American Nazi Party "would never be allowed to vote, hold office or own property" and that their properties would be handed to Blacks who had been re-enslaved under the Nazi regime. This stiffened the American Nazis' resolve not to surrender, but in a whirlwind campaign Patton utterly defeated the American Nazi army within less than a hundred days of his landing. A year later Patton won the first free elections and became president, defeating the opposing candidate John F. Kennedy who had been the captain of a Free Zone submarine.
William Dudley Pelley President in the Reich-5 timeline of GURPS Infinite Worlds. In this timeline Giuseppe Zangara succeeded in assassinating Franklin Delano Roosevelt in 1933. His successors Garner, Lindbergh and Wallace proved unable to handle the Great Depression, and America stood by while Hitler conquered Europe and Japan took over most of Asia, Australia, New Zealand, and Oceania. In 1944 Japan attacked Guam, the Philippines and Hawaii; in the ensuing chaos the far-right William Dudley Pelley was able to get elected president. Pelley quickly assumed dictatorial powers, and his blatant theft of the 1948 election from Robert A. Taft triggered wholesale civil war. The president called for aid from Nazi Germany, which quickly sent 40 Wehrmacht divisions through Canada. The pro-democracy resistance collapsed after Werner Heisenberg developed the atomic bomb which was used on four American cities in 1950. A second attempt at rebellion in 1976 failed, and America ended up as a (very) junior partner of the World-Axis that dominates the planet and seeks to conquer other timelines.
Colin Powell Colin Powell is president of a post-Communist United States in Kim Newman and Eugene Byrne's Back in the USSA, serving as a parallel to Boris Yeltsin. Powell is also mentioned to have been president in an episode of SeaQuest 2032.