A producer of the popular HBO political comedy “Veep” says the most similar candidate in this year’s race for the White House to main character Selina Meyer is former President Trump.
“The Selina-est candidate is Donald Trump,” David Mandel said in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter published Wednesday.
“Vain, worried about his looks, has a ridiculously better relationship with his body people than his own children, petty, vindictive, worries about his own money, doesn’t believe what he says, says whatever to get elected,” Mandel continued.
“Even Selina supported a woman’s right to [choose] — on that, she held firm. Somewhere in there, she had a moral compass … or some kind of something. Maybe a gyroscope,” Mandel said in the interview.
“Veep” has gained extra attention since President Biden dropped out of the race and endorsed Vice President Harris as his successor, with some seeing parallels in the storyline of the show and current news.
Julia Louis-Dreyfus, who played Meyer in “Veep,” previously said in an interview with Variety that Harris said the show’s take on life in Washington, D.C., was right on the nose.
“Her husband, the first gentleman, and she told me they love ‘Veep,’” Louis-Dreyfus said, talking about meeting Harris and second gentleman Doug Emhoff. “And that it’s more like D.C. than anyone would care to admit.”
In an emailed statement to The Hill, Trump campaign spokesperson Steven Cheung said that Mandel “is another elitist, out-of-touch Hollywood liberal who thinks he’s better than everyone else but in reality, he’s a sad little man yearning for relevancy and attention because his parents never gave him any.”
— Updated at 5:05 p.m.