How 'Veep' Predicted the Election, with the Real-Life Jonah Ryan

Welcome to Pablo Torre finds out.

I am Pablo Torre, and today we're going to find out what this sound is.

Oh, does that have any ties to what's happening right now, Pablo?

Does that have any ties to what's going on?

It's Election Day.

Right after this ad.

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I do like how you have no idea what we're about to do.

It's sometimes more fun that way.

It is.

For instance, you just reminded me of something that is not on my exhaustive dossier I've compiled on you, which is that you were in draft day.

Yeah, I was in draft day.

The Cleveland Browns are now on the clock.

It's go time, boss.

You can go out, Row.

Who are you going to take?

What's happening?

Who are you big?

You son of a honey, five minutes, and then you can fire me.

I got Tom Michaels on the line.

Sonny, are we trading six?

I quit, Sonny.

Don't quit.

See what I do from here.

Even like this.

The football world is in shock.

Are you familiar with the cult of people for whom draft day is a real important thing?

Yes, 100%.

It's an odd thing.

Because it kind of wasn't, it didn't light the world on fire when it came out.

I think ultimately was considered a disappointment.

Sure.

People have come up to me over the past, whatever, 10 years to say how much.

I think it's like very much a comfort movie for people, including like I was at like a golf thing with Russ Ortiz and Russ.

Former Giants pitcher Russ Ortiz.

He was like, my wife is going to be really upset that I'm talking to you because she already doesn't like how much I watch Draft Day.

And this is only going to make me watch it more.

I went and saw it in theaters.

You did?

With my good friend, frequent PTFO guest, Mina Mina Kimes.

Oh, nice.

And it's the sort of thing for football fans, especially, and this is not a joke or an exaggeration.

During the opening like sequence, as they're like flashing actual approved licensed NFL team names and logos, Mina is booing and cheering.

Can I tell you two things that came out that I loved about the NFL throughout that?

That they are all so competitive.

In the first version of the script that I read, Bo Callahan, the quarterback, it was clear he was going to be a bust.

Find it odd that nobody on the team was at their teammate's 21st birthday party.

A key famous plot point is that in the scouting of Bo Callahan, nobody went to his birthday party and they were like, that guy or something.

This is the reddest flag.

The Seahawks, the actual Seahawks organization refused to lose a trade.

And so they essentially made the script change so that it would be like, you don't know if he's he's going to be a bust because the actual Seahawks were like, we don't lose trades.

We won't lose a fictionalized trade.

We won't lose a fictionalized trade.

And then when they were showing us in like the war room, somebody comes out and makes an announcement like, okay, this next pick, this is for a movie.

This is not real.

So just react as if it's the first pick.

Oh, they did it during the actual draft.

They did it during the actual draft.

And they were showing us like the raw footage for us to react to of Roger Goodell going out on stage, announcing the first pick.

The Cleveland Browns select

Vanta Mack, Linebacker, Ohio State.

Like, you know, Vanta Mack, no matter what.

Vanta Mack, no matter what.

And even though it was a fake draft, everybody still booed Roger Goodell, and they had to edit it out and add cheering.

But like in the raw footage, everybody was booing him for the fake draft.

But speaking of blurring the lines between real and fake,

the thing I really wanted actor Timothy Simons to help me find out about today was not his performance as a Cleveland Brown Scout.

That's not why he's in studio with us.

It's because of something a little less sanitized.

How am I doing?

Eating so much damn shit.

Hey, what?

This is an elementary school.

Watch your spewing mouth, you animal.

Hey, you're gonna pay for that.

That is a salt.

That is a salt.

You are witnesses.

Right now,

if you know the show Veep, which ran from 2012 to 2019 on HBO, won 17 Emmys and also a Peabody for good measure, you know Timothy Simons as Jonah Ryan, a scheming White House aide who, by the end of season seven, transforms into a vice presidential candidate, a kind of proto-JD Vance.

And Tim has done plenty of other things since playing Jonah, by the way.

You can watch him right now, for instance, in the rom-com Nobody Wants This on Netflix.

But today is election day,

which means that I should also point out that former PTFO guest Dave Mandel, who did the Yankee wife swap episode with us, was also Veep's showrunner.

And that Julia Louis Dreyfus starred as Selena Meyer, the titular, morally bankrupt Veep turned president.

No, I mean,

BOTIS

is

gonna resign

and I'm about to become president of america

and if that plot point sounds you know just a little prophetic in retrospect

just know that the same is true for so much of this show

this past year when

when joe biden dropped out and kamala came in everybody was relating that to the moment where the president steps down and veep yes like veep has now been off the air since 2019 right Ran from 2012 to 2019.

But it also came out this summer and it also came out a year and a half ago.

Like whenever people find it is the moment it came out.

So people in a way like are responding to it in the same way as if it is like currently going on and is happening now rather than something that was on television and now is not.

Does that make sense?

Well, it more than makes sense.

It is in a literal sense true insofar as Veep, various plot points are actually happening all of the time in American politics.

Let me think the reason you reached out about this specifically was J.D.

Vance

at the donut shop, right?

Yes.

And I was like, all right, I got to talk to Timothy Simons, my friend, about what it's like to be

the version of this person in a fictional world that presaged a character like this being an actual vice president.

Hey, how are you?

Good, good.

The zoo has come to town.

I'm sorry, man.

Okay, yeah.

She doesn't want to be on film, guys, so just cut her out of anything.

I appreciate that, man.

I'll JD Gates.

I'm working vice president, can't see it.

Okay.

I remember, like, specifically the last season, we were solidly in the first Trump term, and there was a...

a general sense of like, well, how do you satirize politics when this is beyond satire?

Yes.

And satire

tends to be a scalpel.

And we kind of had to turn into a sledgehammer in a way because nothing, like there's nothing subtle about what was happening.

So then you also then had to like pump these things up even more broadly than what was happening.

But I don't know that I actually ever thought that some of the season seven stuff would actually be predictive, but we're just kind of fully there.

Like I think in the finale, Joan Orion says something to the effect of like,

I love America, but we have to face facts.

This is a horrific country that is falling apart because it is full of people who are different than me.

I doubt that they have improved their messaging in between when we are recording this and election day.

They come from Africa.

They come from Asia.

They come from South America.

They're ruining our country.

And it's true.

They're destroying the blood of our country.

That's what they're doing.

They're destroying our country.

In fact, they probably have only gotten more naked in it.

Yeah.

Is there a scene that best sort of introduces your character?

I do think that, like, the Jonad files is like a good introduction, both to like what like the tone of the show, but also a lot of the specific characters and how they react to situations.

One of the like younger staffers on the Selena Meyer presidential campaign has hacked the personal data of bereaved families who have lost children so that they could specifically target them with mailings about child mortality.

And then they try to cover it up.

So then everyone is dragged in front of a congressional committee to testify about their knowledge.

Do you recall a document shared on the J Drive titled the Jonad Files?

No, no matter.

No, that doesn't ring a bell.

So it's not a word combining Jonah and gonad?

On a laptop, there is a list of things, a glossary that sounds like this.

That is exactly what it is, and Mr.

Egan knows that.

In fact, Mr.

Egan, I was told that you encouraged staffers to add to this glossary of abuse.

I do not, at this moment in time, recall the action nor the document.

Okay, maybe this will jog your memory.

We have some extracts.

J-Rock, Jizzy Gillespie, Jack and the Giant Jack Off, Galen, Tinkerballs, Wadzilla, One Erection.

Do we have to go through all of these?

I'm not sure that I see the relevance.

The witnesses claim they held their former colleague in high regard, and I am attempting to prove otherwise.

Okay, yeah, sure, no, you can proceed.

The pointless giant, the 60-foot virgin, Jim Panzer, Jonah Ono, Hagrid's nutsack, Scrotum Pole, Transgender Formers, 12 years a slave to off, Benedict in his own hand, Guys Scraper, the cloud botherer, super califragilistic XB Alley Cheese, Teenage Mutant Ninja Pole, Spubaca.

My college friends called me Tall McCartney.

I preferred that.

That's a good nickname.

Fretish Crackshow.

So there's so much going on there, not only about the show that I love, but I think when you, to your question of Jonas specifically, I think it's the last thing where even though all of those things have been read into the congressional record, he's still like, I can save this.

He's like one of those people that cannot have an ego death.

And so he is sort of...

That's such a good way of putting it.

You know what I mean?

Relentlessly, forever egotistical, despite many, many sledgehammers coming for him.

They aren't subtle things that are happening to him.

People are looking him in the eye and telling him that they don't like him.

Oh, there is, there is a

palpable shamelessness.

Yeah.

That again feels kind of familiar.

Yes.

That he is just like, you know, of all those things, I bet if I just throw in Tom McCartney, that's going to be the one that's going to stick.

When you go back and you listen to this stuff,

as you did just now,

does stuff sort of fall through the cracks of your memory?

Or is all of this very vivid still?

I feel like I do kind of always forget about Teenage Mutant Ninja ass.

Like, you know, like the Cloud Botherer is one that I go back to because like a lot of times people will say, like, well, what was your favorite insult?

And I go to that one just because usually like...

The dirty ones are really funny, but a lot of times you're in a circumstance in which you can't say like Jolly Green's face.

Yeah.

Benedict in your own hand.

Benedict in your own hand.

So like Cloud bother is also like a very devastating but gentle insult.

Yeah, there's there's an almost like Lord of the Rings aspect to it.

The clouds.

Cloud get out of here.

I will point out, by the way, obviously your actual sense of humor, which allows you to enjoy every single joke,

it does seem to extend to the jokes that are actually just about how you personally, Timothy Simons, look.

Yes.

It is hard.

Like sometimes you'll just see a writer walk in, look look you up and down,

and then they'll leave the room and they'll come back with alts.

And it's like, you motherfucker, you just came in here and figured that one out.

Like there's an outtake or like a thing on a blooper reel.

We're all in like a like a black suburban, and this is like in between takes, but the camera's rolling.

And Dave comes in, he's like, all right, yeah, you look like someone melted Play-Doh all over a flagpole.

There it is.

God damn.

Yeah, your skeleton is an engineering engineering conundrum.

Yes, it's like there's no way that

his joints should be able to take whatever load is being put upon them.

Early on, I definitely like made choices about the way he looked as a character that I think tried to separate him from me.

Explain the key visual differences where you were like, I need to put some distance between us.

We part

his hair in a way that I do not part my hair.

And And then like in the way that he dressed, the idea was that all of these staffers are essentially interns.

They get paid nothing.

The idea was that he would get like both sleep and get dressed in his car.

So like the clothes that he wore were like the best that he could find at a Goodwill.

Nothing fit quite right.

So it wasn't like there was a full physical change.

There were just like for me attempts to make him different enough from me so that I could walk away from it at the end of the day.

It's the density of jokes.

It's unrelenting.

Yeah.

And it's the writing that makes it so that that all feels like both surgery and sledgehammers.

And it's just really hard to do both.

Yeah.

And I'm just curious, your audition process for a show like this,

how did you get this job?

I got it because like a friend of mine who I was like the roommate of a guy that I worked at a bar with in Chicago was the casting associate for Allison Jones.

And if like your audience doesn't know who Allison Jones is, she's like a legendary casting director who's kind of like, she did, I think like one of her first jobs, like when she was just starting out was on Golden Girls and has done sort of every good comedy from then until now.

She works with friend of the show, Mike Scherr.

She did arrested development in the office.

And my friend that worked there was like, oh, you might want to bring in my friend Tim.

He just did this thing.

He showed it to her.

It was funny.

And she was like, cool.

Yeah, bring him in.

And then like, I was auditioning against type.

It was written for like a short, fat, hairy, like short, fat, bearded guy.

And so I, like, it was kind of stacked against me, never thought I would get it and kind of just kept making it through.

It's jarring because the visual gag of you and Julia Louis Dreyfus, it is the stature asymmetry.

the inverse of the power asymmetry and the constant playing with that.

How apparent was it when you were going through this process and you realize, okay, I'm maybe not exactly what they had envisioned originally.

How obvious was it that you were going to be the version of Jonah that we are now familiar with?

Was that clear?

It was clear from the beginning that he didn't have a lot of respect for anybody that worked in the vice president's office because he worked in the White House.

You here to spy, Jonah?

I'm not here to spy.

I work at the White House, so I can just walk in and say, I'm from the White House.

What the f ⁇ are you doing?

What?

At one point, Mike says you're like the human version of a text message.

Like you're a post-it note that can walk.

The liaison.

Yeah, I was the liaison, but he wore that as like, I speak with the voice of the president.

The question of

how

enthusiastic you were about being an asshole, did that stop you at all?

I think like there's a certain sort of like wish fulfillment and freedom.

in

playing bad people because they can go into a room and say the worst thing and not worry about it.

Like you don't have a lot of guardrails in performance.

Dessert is an apple.

America wants its fruit in roll-up form, not this nerd feast.

I mean, it's no wonder kids are shooting up schools with lunches like these.

When I was a kid, I ate sloppy joes.

I ate tater tots,

pizza on a bagel.

The only green bean I ate was a green jelly bean, and I grew to be so tall, my stupid mom had to get a different car.

I mean, I don't know that there's a downside to it outside of like

people possibly assuming I would then find myself in real life, maybe being like too nice in situations where I should have been a little ruder because I don't want there to be an association between me and a person that is bad.

You know what I mean?

I was going to ask you,

how often do you feel obliged to clarify that you are not, in fact, Jonah Ryan?

A lot of times, I actually remember getting a good piece of advice from Julia, which was: if somebody calls you by your character's name in public, like, don't respond.

And simply because that's not your name.

And so, like, that has been a great piece of advice in that if somebody comes up, I am never rude to somebody if they come up, just in the way of like, I've been, I cannot tell you how excited the first time I was when I ever saw Steve Buscemi.

And so, you don't want to make them feel like just because they liked something you did.

You know what I mean?

Yes.

But there there is a certain sense of like, you have to draw a boundary somewhere.

And if somebody shouts the name Jonah on the street, even if I hear it, I don't respond.

I am curious, though, do they sort of take up the role of guy browbeating you?

A little, sometimes, yes.

I was in a grocery store one time.

I've said this before, where somebody just came up to me and said, jolly green sh's face.

What are you laughing about?

Jolly green's face?

I was sorry, man.

God damn it.

Why are you even here?

Oh, I came here to tell you that you're a meme ma'am.

I'm a meme, ma'am.

What are you talking about?

Speak English, boy.

A meme, an internet phenomenon.

Oh, okay.

And I was like, I don't know, man.

We're like, we're at the grocery store and you're talking about

like, we got to just find like a gentler way to get into this.

And I would say, like, the times where, like, and they're very few and far between where like a drunk person starts yelling insults at me, I am sort of like, I don't really roll with that.

Without being rude, I don't really like encourage that.

Sure.

Now, in their defense, briefly,

when there are scenes does the devil need an advocate what does the devil need an advocate I'm just saying sometimes uh if you're gonna be called a uh croissant though

you kind of had to expect it's gonna come up again I was trying to use Jonah for intelligence that's like trying to use a croissant as a

I thought no no no let me be more clear it doesn't do the job and it makes a mess

she is so good it's ridiculous.

That sort of like, let me be clear, like the, the, that wasn't scripted.

That was something that she just threw in.

And one thing that I love about that's from like the first season.

Yes.

And like, you're still trying to figure out, you don't know where this is all going to go.

Two things that I feel like are in what you just showed that end up being huge things is her temper.

which ends up being like a very long running sort of scary thing throughout a lot of the the show and so like when she like does that line reading of it makes a mess oh it's a volcanic the volcanic anger that's underneath that is incredibly funny and was kind of found in the moment and also that she like sort of over enunciates croissant which then leads to she basically this was not the case at the time but she essentially hates america so she hates america and would rather live in france where people are hot and rich you know what i mean the cosplaying of I am a champion of the working person, while also being incredibly, incredibly elitist.

Oh, does that have any ties to what's happening right now, Pablo?

Does that have any ties to what's going on?

It's election day.

If you're looking to add something special to your next celebration, try Remy Martin 1738 Accord Royale.

This smooth, flavorful cognac is crafted from the finest grapes and aged to perfection, giving you rich notes of oak and caramel with every sip.

Whether you're celebrating a big win or simply enjoying some cocktails with family and friends, Remy Martin 1738 is the perfect spirit to elevate any occasion.

So go ahead, treat yourself to a little luxury, and try Remy Martin 1738 Accord Royale.

Learn more at remymartin.com.

Remy Martin Cognac, Feen Champion, African Alcohol by Volume 40 by Remy Control, USA Incorporated, New York, New York, 1738.

Centaur Design.

Please drink responsibly.

Selena Meyer, as a character, when did it occur to you that there was Trump in this?

Do you remember?

Because again, this was 2012.

It started.

At what point was it like, oh, we are inadvertently crossing streams with reality in this way?

I remember when we started the show, the fun of it was like we were in the Obama era.

So we were just sort of seeing the beginning of Congress turning into like a shit show

of just the most insane people.

The midterms had just happened.

So you were first seeing that wave of like Tea Party people being elected.

Yes.

In the first season, you could see people who were holding on to their core values, but were trying to find ways to get them into practice without completely selling their souls.

And at one point, I think it's season three or season four, there's like an episode called Alicia where they are trying to figure out how she's going to announce her candidacy.

And like, I feel like for me, that's the turning point where

they all left behind whatever principles they had and it just became the naked pursuit of power.

How are you?

I just want you to know that universal child care is something I'm going to be passionate about in my campaign.

Ma'am, childcare, children are of no value.

Forget child care.

It doesn't matter if you believe it, as long as you can convince people you believe it so that you can get elected.

So, like, I think that sort of starts there.

I know that, like, the Trumpian qualities of Selena were kind of, or in the show, like, especially in the last season, were split between Selena and Jonah.

Like, you could put all of like the

xenophobia and anti-vax stuff into Jonah, and you could put the quest for power beyond anything

and the demand for loyalty from

her staff into her.

You guys have to stop the recount.

I'm sorry, what?

Stop the count.

Shut up, Gary.

Ma'am, we can't.

I don't care.

The train has very publicly left the station and derailed at high speed.

Yeah, yeah, stop the count.

Ma'am, this would look like a size 14 flip-flop.

We really can't.

I don't give a f.

You're going to cancel this recount like Anne Frank Spot Nitzfa.

Yeah, I'm on it.

The utter and just total selfishness of it's about me.

There is no one who has sacrificed more than me.

And that ultimately culminates with Gary being sent to federal prison, even though he's been the most loyal to her.

Right.

Because that is just her.

Her body man.

Yeah, her body man, played by Tony Hale.

Like, he ends up going to federal prison for years, for a decade.

And by the way, a body man being compromised in a perhaps federally problematic scandal.

Damn it.

It's just.

I truly hate it.

But Jonah Ryan, of course, loves it.

And eventually, despite his profound unlikability, Jonah goes from striving West Wing aide to bona fide congressional candidate, which means filming a campaign ad.

Hello there.

I'm Jonah Ryan.

And I grew up right here in the awesome state of New Hampshire, the granite state of the United States.

For your family, for your future, vote Ryan for Congress.

My name is Jonah Ryan, and I approve this message.

And then a focus group of everyday Americans

assesses the video.

You think about it.

His head is too big for his body, but then sometimes his body is too big for his head.

He's the wrong shape.

A shape is wrong.

Does anyone have anything positive to say about the ad?

I like the kid.

Yeah.

Like the kid in the ad, the little boy.

But I did not like that he was next to that guy.

I was like, run.

Oh, surprise, surprise.

Look who's here.

Do you morons really not understand that this is a two-way mirror?

Seriously?

Are you shocked by that technology?

I work in the fing ⁇ ing West Wing, you temperance farm ad mother f ⁇ ers that f ⁇ you.

Watch your mouth.

Sit your f ⁇ ing mom jeans down.

Watch your mouth.

You gotta learn to control your f ⁇ ing temper.

I know at one point the guy who I think I call a

sit your mom at Mom Jeans down.

That guy at one point says, like in response to that commercial, that wood's not going to burn right.

You are chopping wood very,

very poorly.

And so the the guy says that wood's not going to burn right.

That's not an insult.

It's not offensive.

You could put that joke in a children's show, but it is still, I just love that joke.

So number one, if you slow down frame by frame that commercial of me chopping wood.

The campaign ad.

The campaign ad, you can see that I start to swing the axe.

It then cuts to a close-up of the wood splitting.

And then it goes back to me like sort of putting the thing on my shoulder.

And if you slow it down frame by frame, you can see that the hands holding the axe are a black person's hands.

I didn't have the upper body strength.

And it's Sam Richardson who played Richard who is actually successfully able to chop the wood.

And that is a joke you'd have to go frame by frame to see.

And also that ad, though, what it captures too is the idea of I'm the outsider's insider, which is to say you worked.

in the West Wing, as you proudly declared in that earlier clip, but now you are dressed in the flannel and the

robes of a common American.

Yes.

And then, like, you know, flash forward a few years later, there's that sort of like weird, contemplative picture of Donald Trump Jr.

in his fing cosplay rural Americana.

Exactly.

And the idea also, I mean, like the outsider's insider, it's the same

of, man, you were president for four years and you're still saying that you're part of, like, Marjorie Taylor Greene.

I hate even saying the names of these people because it ultimately just turns into fundraising for them.

But like, you're just a congressperson now.

You are a politician.

So either do the job or don't.

But don't just stay in there saying, I'm not this, I'm a real person.

Like do something or leave.

And what Jonah does, obviously, is get elected to Congress.

Not unlike JD fans.

And then later, Jonah decides to run for president.

Because of course he does.

At At which point, Jonah Ryan decides to campaign against a very familiar opponent.

And one more thing.

I just found out from my stupid stepfather.

Father-in-law.

From my stupid stepfather-in-law that math was created by Muslims.

Yeah.

And we teach this Islamic math to children.

Math teachers are terrorists.

They might not.

I love this.

Okay, that's it.

I may be be a registered sex offender, but I cannot be a part of this.

I'm gone.

Algebra?

More like Al Jazeera.

Under Orion presidency, I will ban this Sharia math from being taught to American children.

There will be no more math.

No more math!

No more math!

No more math!

No more math!

God fing America!

No more math!

It's just so good.

I mean,

like, I think the, the, the, the comparison that we can make now that we are currently being forced to live through of like a person that doesn't know how to order donuts at a donut store.

Imagine being his wife and you're at Yale and you just like, you find the most ambitious person at Yale.

What you gain from that is you have to sit through a kid rock concert at the Republican National Convention.

Like the stuff about eating cats and dogs, there is like a shamelessness about it that goes even beyond these sort of heightened circumstances, you know?

The stuff that I wonder about personally is whether inside their nerve endings are alive enough such that they feel secretly

the pain of not actually loving the demo that they're actually publicly performing for.

Whether the Comic-Con of their politics is actually hollow inside or whether they're just fully transformed into, nope, this feels good.

This is what politics is.

They don't need to even begin to rationalize it anymore.

I don't know, man.

That seems like a conversation for him in the mirror.

You know what I mean?

Like, just like, that's between you and God, man.

But like, at some point, the brain is like going to respond to positive affirmation, like in the way that like video games now are designed to addict kids to them.

They're like, oh, we found out what is released in a child's brain when you give him a little prize on Fortnite.

I'm sure, like, JD Vance just going around the country getting little prizes from Fortnite and just like, probably his brain has rewired at this point.

While also feeling, again, in a familiar childlike way,

he's experienced being bullied in his mind, I bet.

Yes.

Just the idea that all of these people think they're better than me in ways that now I resent.

And so, yeah, maybe the rewiring just isn't that complicated at this point.

It's quite obvious.

Yeah, like that wasn't too far.

It wasn't a huge span of a bridge to build for him to get there.

Long after I had said, hey, hey, hey, Tim, will you come on the show?

This is from days ago.

The New Republic puts out one of these quizzes, and it's who said it?

Veeps, Jonah Ryan, or J.D.

Vance?

I actually got one of those wrong.

Which one did you get wrong?

It was the.

Was it, let me give you some options.

Was it, quote, Indigenous Peoples Day is a fake holiday created to sow division?

Or was it, quote, who's taking care of your pet cats and or tarantula while you hate tweet me?

Oh my God, I think it was the first one that I got wrong because it felt like Jonah at one point went on a Columbus Day rant.

Those were the ones that I got wrong.

They were?

Yeah.

Were those both JD vans?

Those are both JD vans.

Okay.

Yeah.

The rest of them I got right.

But yeah, but you can imagine a world in which he is.

Totally.

Oh, fuck.

For your character on the show, it is the failing upwards

dynamic of going from liaison to congressman.

I forget when you became a streamer.

I think that was season, the beginning of season three.

Infotainment.

Thank you, Pablo.

This is Joan Orion, and you are witnessing the birth of Ryontology.

Old media like the Washington Toast better go run and hide in the bathroom and join the Pooh York Times because we are cutting in.

So yeah, so briefly he was like an online rabble rouser before being accepted back into the White House.

There is an actual person who runs a company called Valutainement in real life, who's a Trump surrogate now, this guy Patrick Bett David.

Okay.

And when I saw Valutainment, I was like, that's the most

actually a Veep joke.

Yes.

This is a very important time in the history of America.

This is a real war that's taking place.

They're trying to brainwash your kids and take them away from you.

The scene where you are now back in front of Selena and surrounded by her staff, and you have become a congressman, and now you're going to be a member of her administration, and they want you to become the vice president.

And your response as a character is what?

No.

Just no.

Yes, we do.

I don't know why we are here.

Me neither.

But I love meeting new people.

She is offering you vice president, you monument to vaginal dryness.

Well, then no.

I'm sorry?

I said no, as in never.

I will be president or I will be nothing.

And in fact, if I don't get the nomination, I might run as a third party just to f your shit up.

For whatever reason, RFK Jr.

probably thought he could have been president.

Yes.

Even though, like, you know, you're like polling at like less than 1%.

The debate scene, where it is, the CNN debate for everybody polling at 5% or less.

Or not statistically significant.

Welcome back to tonight's debate, featuring candidates polling between 5% and not statistically significant.

I'm Bri Ramachanda.

I'm like, this is unfortunately quite germane to the actual administration staffing decisions happening at this moment.

He should be

unbelievably excited to have that opportunity.

And I just love that he, like, for the first moment, he is sort of clear-eyed in, like, you know, nobody's going to tell me what to do on my own.

It might be the first moment where he actually just makes a decision, like a clear-eyed decision for himself.

Yes, his, again,

problematically engineered spinal cord actually stands straight up

for a beautiful moment.

And then, what happens?

Then I just get brow beaten.

You shut the f ⁇ up, you gum recessed face anus.

Don't you see?

You've just been off for the second most powerful job in the world.

No, you shut up, Uncle Jepp.

I will not let anyone speak to me like that.

President or nothing?

Yeah.

They basically just browbeat me until I say, like, all right, fine.

Hey, fine, Jesus fing Christ, I'll be vice president.

Just stop yelling at me.

Which is, I guess, the entire thesis of the show generally.

And that is why I bring it up near the end here, which is that the entire point of why Veep is the title seems to be that what you think is power is actually pathetic

in a nutshell.

Yeah.

And what you also

maybe aspire to as a kid, as an innocent young American who wants to maybe make a difference in this country one day, what you're actually signing up for is to be in an office full of actual psychopaths.

Psychopaths performing a job that is

in some ways irrelevant.

Yeah, the vice president's

impotence

feels like something that I didn't fully appreciate until I watched a fictionalized depiction of the vice president.

I think there's something in the first or I think in the first season where Julia finds out that there's a meeting happening that she was supposed to be invited to, and she like puts on running shoes and runs to the meeting and pretends as if she's like, Oh, you started without me.

Like, you know what I mean?

Like, to save face of like, I wasn't invited.

She finds her way there.

And that was based on Al Gore, who was promised to be in every meeting.

Like, I feel like this is just the thing.

Like, you're going to be my right-hand guy.

Like, you're going to be in there with me every step of the way.

And as soon as you get there, they're like, find something else to do.

But that was based on Al Gore, who, whenever he was left out of a meeting, would just sprint to the White House.

He would actually put on running shoes and run there to make sure that he was a part of it.

The thirst that we're describing here, as per the Al Gore example, is a bipartisan one.

The desperation.

I mean, like, there is a reason that there's the old joke of like, what's the most dangerous place in Washington?

And it's in between Chuck Schumer and a video camera or like in between Chuck Schumer and a microphone.

Right.

Which brings me to how you will be spending election day.

Oh, God, man.

What's your game day routine, do you think?

Are you somebody who's going to watch mainline cable news?

Are you going to be unplugged?

Are you going to be ordering food?

Are you going to be sober?

How does this all work for Timothy Simons?

I think most of the day is going to be spent like in a, in a, in some sense of like clinical detachment or disassociation, only because like I have anxiety surrounding it that cannot be solved.

Like there is no solving it except for it being done.

Like the, I don't know, there's like preeclampsia is a, is a disease that only exists in pregnant women and the only cure is to not be pregnant.

You know what I mean?

So I guess if we're just going to focus on the day, I will spend most of the day not

looking at anything.

You're not going to be updating Twitter.

No, I got locked out of Twitter like two years ago and it's been the best thing that's ever happened.

What did you do to get locked out of Twitter?

Oh, it was like when the blue check thing happened, you had, you couldn't have two factor verification

and I wasn't going to pay for it.

And then somehow the two-factor thing got messed up and I just can't get back in there.

And honestly, it's so much better.

Like the world is so much better.

Like the people that make you mad, the Ben Shapiros of the world, I can't tell you.

They don't matter.

They don't matter if it's, if you're not there.

It's incredible.

You know how many times people bring up Ben Shapiro?

Like never.

Nobody's ever talking about him.

It's incredible.

So I will not be mainlining Twitter that day.

I will be actively avoiding all news, I think, until around when polls close.

I'm assuming that we will end up as a family watching some of the returns.

You know, our kids are now sort of old enough where they understand generally what's happening or what's at stake or what is interesting about it.

And they're going to want to see a little bit of that.

You know, the thought that I have about my own daughter is whether I would ever want to encourage her, who's Violet is four and a half, to go into politics at some point.

I hate, as a general rule, the people who are so thirsty to be a politician that they actually go through with a thing that feels and looks, by all accounts, actually miserable.

Yeah.

But I'm also aware that the only way to get those people to not do that is to get people who are actually the ones that I would like to save our country to do the job.

And it's a real catch-22, Tim.

Yeah, I don't know.

I don't know that, like, I don't know that we set up the right system here.

I don't know.

Yeah.

You think?

You think, you think?

Yeah, it's not.

It's not going great.

Yeah,

there is something to

that complexity that does drive me back towards the simplicity of draft day.

Yes.

You know what was simple in draft day?

Vonte Mack, no matter what.

Vanta Mack, no matter f ⁇ .

You don't have to have anxiety about what you're going to do.

And if it's just Vanta Mac, no matter what.

Vanta Mack,

2024.

I would 100% vote for Vonte Mack.

That dude had so many people at his birthday party.

He had so many people at his birthday party.

He cared about his family.

He did things for the right reasons.

He was a leader.

He was an actual leader.

You see him in the tunnel.

Yes.

Vonte Mack 2024.

Timothy Simons, thank you for

coming by the studio.

Man, my pleasure.

Good to see you.

This This has been Pablo Torre Finds Out, a Meadowlark media production,

and I'll talk to you next time.