Pablo Torre Finds Out - How 'Veep' Predicted the Election, with the Real-Life Jonah Ryan

Episode Date: November 5, 2024

It's Election Day. And if there is anyone who saw this entire mess coming, it's the prophets behind the HBO series Veep — a 17-time Emmy-award-winning satire that feels, with each passing day, like a political documentary. So, today, we invite none other than actor Timothy Simons to join us, in studio, to relive what it was like to play Jonah Ryan: the Jolly Green Jizz Face, himself. Also: Draft Day. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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. You're listening to Giraff Kings Network. 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 a lot of. 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 got, boss. You're going to take. What's happening? Who you pick you? You, son of a minute.

I need 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. You don't 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. 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 Kimes. Oh, nice. And it's the sort of thing for football fans especially. And this is not a joke or 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 teammates' 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, this guy. 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 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 movement. movie. This is not real. So just react as if it's the first pick of a draft.

Oh, they did it during the actual draft. Of course. 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 Brown select Vante Mack, linebacker, Ohio State. Like you know, Vante Mac, no matter what. Vante Mac, 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. House boat. I followed candidate Jonah Ryan as he campaigned in his home state. How am I doing? Eating so much f***ing him shi-cli-cone. Hey! What? This is an elementary school. Watch your spewing mouth, you animal. Hey, you're going to pay for that. That is a sulk. 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 J.D. 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. 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 Joe Biden dropped out and Kamala came in,

everybody was relating that to the moment where the president steps down in VEP. Yes. Like, VEP has now been off the air since 2019. Right, ran it 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 it makes sense. It is, in a literal sense, true, insofar as Vee, various plot points, are actually happening all of the time in American politics. I mean, think the reason you reached out about this specifically was J.D. Vance at the

at the donut shop, right? Yes. And I was like, all right, I got to talk to Timothy Seibons, 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, hey. Okay, yeah. She doesn't want to be on film, guys, so just cut her out of anything. I'm kidding. I'm running for the vice president. You'll see it. Okay.

I remember like specifically the last season, we were solidly in the first Trump term. And there was a general sense of like, well, how do you satirize politics when this is beyond satire? Yes. And satire like is 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, Jonah Ryan 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 in 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 in how they react to situations. One of the 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, ma'am. That doesn't ring a ball. 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 encourage staffers to add to this glossary of abuse. I do not, at this moment of time, recall the action, nor the document. Okay, maybe this will jog your memory. We have some extracts. J-Rock, Jusley Gillespie, Jack and the Giant Jackoff, Galeon, 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, chimpanzee, Jonah Ono, Hagrid's Nutsack, scrotum pole, transgender formers, 12 years a slave to borgheim off, Benedict in his own hand, guy scraper,

the cloud botherer, super-califragilistic XBali cheese, teenage mutant ninja asshole, Spubaka. My college friends called me Tall McCartney. I preferred that. That's a good nickname.

So there's so much going on there not only about the show that I love, I think to your question of Jonah 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 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 assholes. 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? 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 face. Yeah, Benedict C, in your own hand. Benedict Cs in your own hand. So like cloud botherer is also like a very devastating but gentle insult. Yeah, there's there's it almost like Lord of the Rings aspect

to it. The cloud. The cloud's just like, oh, I can 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 Simon's look. Yes.

It is hard. Like, sometimes you'll just see a writer walk in, 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-er. 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 black suburban. And this is like in between takes, but the camera's rolling. And Dave comes in. It's like, all right, yeah, you look like. Like someone melted Play-Doh all over a flagpole. There it is. God damn. Yeah, your skeleton is an engineering conundrum.

Yes. It's like there's no way that his joints should be able to take. take whatever load is being put upon them. Early on, I definitely 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're like, I need to put some distance between us. We part his hair in a way that I do not part my hair.

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 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 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. like your audience doesn't know how Alison Jones is. She's like a legendary casting director. Truly. 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 Scher.

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, short, fat, bearded guy. And so, 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, maybe not exactly what they had divisioned 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're 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 fuck are you doing? What? At one point, Mike says you're like a 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, of guardrails and 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 assume. 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 Joan or 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 Bouchemmy. And so you don't want to make them feel like shit just because they liked something you did. You know what I mean? Yes. But there is a certain sense of, like, you have to do. draw 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 shit's face. What are you laughing about? Jolly green his face? I was sorry, man. God damn. Why are you even here? Oh, I came here

to tell you that you're a meme, ma'am. I'm a meme, 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 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... Oh, does the devil need an advocate? Well, you know, I'm just saying sometimes if you're going to be called a croissant d'histo, kind of had to be expected it's going to come up again. I was trying to use Jonah for intelligence. That's like trying to use a croissant as a fucking dole-do. I thought...

No, no, no, no. Let me be more clear. It doesn't do the job. And it makes a fucking mess. She is so fucking good. It's ridiculous. That sort of like let me be clear. that wasn't scripted.

That was something that she just threw in. And one thing I love about, that's from like the first season. 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 through a lot of the show. And so like when she like,

that line reading of it makes a fucking 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 fucking 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. Yes. 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. Selina 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 inadvertis. Certainly 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 area. So we were just sort of seeing the beginning of Congress turning into a 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. 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, child care. 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. Galena 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 he railed at high school.

No, yeah, stop the count. Ma'am, this would look like a size 14 flip-flop. We really can't. I don't give a fuck. You're going to cancel this recount like Anne Franks' bat mitzvah. Yeah, I'm honest. 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 like... 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 Aid 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's too big for his head.

He's the wrong shape. Shape is wrong. Does anyone have anything positive to say about the ad? 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 running.

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 fucking West Wing, you tempered farm ad motherfuckers. That'd be... Watch your mouth.

Sit your fucking mom jeans down, dude. You've got to learn to control your fucking temper. I should hate it. 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. chopping wood very poorly.

And so 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 I just love that fucking 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 flamings,

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 fucking 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 Green. 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 which point, Jonah Ryan decides the 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 it. Okay, that's it. I may be a registered sex offender, but I cannot be a part of this. I'm gone.

Algebra? More like Al Jazeera. Under a Ryan presidency, I will ban this Sharia math from being taught to American children. Then you're coming? There will be no more math. One set. No more math. No more math. No more math. No more math. God fucking America. It's just so good.

I mean, like, I think the comparison that we can make now that we are currently being forced to live through, 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 but that seems like a f*** 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 we found out what is released in a child's brain when you give him a little prize on Fortnite. I'm sure, like, J.D. 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. 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. 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, Tim, we come on the show. This is from days ago, the New Republic puts out one of these quizzes, and it's who said it, Veeves 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. Yes. Was it, quote, Indigenous People's 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 Vang. 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 Jonah Ryan and you are witnessing the birth. Old media like the Washington toast, better go run and hide in the bathroom and join the Poo York Times,

because we are cutting in. So yeah, so briefly he was like an online rabble-rous. or before being accepted back into the White House. There's an actual person who runs a company called Valuetainment in real life, who's a Trump surrogate now, this guy Patrick Bet 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 of 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 fuck 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 statet. statistically significant.

Welcome back to tonight's debate featuring candidates polling between 5% and not statistically significant. I'm Brie Ramecham. 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 browbeaten. Shut the fuck up, you gum-resist face anus. Don't you see you've just been off of the second most powerful juice?

In the world! No, you shut up, Uncle Jeff. 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. Okay, fine. Jesus, fucking 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 presidents, their 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 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 the 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

in some sense of clinical detachment or disassociation. Only because I have anxiety surrounding it that cannot be solved. There is no solving it except for it being done. I don't know. There's like pre-exhares. Eclampsia 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 couldn't have two-factor verification. Oh, sure. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

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 shapiro's 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. do, Tim? Yeah, I don't know. I don't know that, like, I don't know that we set up, like, the right system here. I don't know, yeah. You think. You think, you think.

Yeah, it's not, like, it's not going great. Yeah, there is, there is something to, to that complexity that does drive me back towards the simplicity of draft day. Yes. You know what, you know what was simple in draft day? Vante Mac, no matter what. Vante Mac, no matter what.

You don't have to have anxiety about what you're going to do. And if it's just Vante Mac, no matter what. Vante Mac, 2024. I would 100% vote for Vante Mac. 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. Vante Mac 2024. Timothy Simon. Thank you for coming by the studio. Man, my pleasure. Good to see you.

This has been Pablo Torre finds out. A Metal Arc Media production. And I'll talk to you next time.