Can Kamala Hold On? With Veep EP Frank Rich 01:04:42

What's your favorite comma? I mean, mine is the is is Venn diagrams. Venn diagrams. It's just so authentic. I really enjoy the I think I I love all the you know, the the context to which became before you unburdened, you know, yeah, I love that.

I'm Ben Smith. I'm Naeem Araza. And this is Mixed Signals from Semaphore Media. Today we're going to talk about Kamala Harris and how she became cool again. We're going to discuss whether it will last, whether the press is coming for her, and when fact is better than fiction. For that last part, we're going to have the former executive producer of Veep and Succession, Frank Rich, on to join us. And it's fitting because this week is basically like a fusion, a mashup of Veep and Succession. Yeah, just I can't believe we're here, honestly, because it's been the craziest week.

week, month of our professional lives, I think. Of course, I think it has been. And that actually reminds me, we have to roll back the tape a little bit to, I think it's like three and a half weeks ago, right after the debate, we taped, do you remember? It was like Thursday at 11 p.m. ET. It was like 10,000 years ago. I have no memory. It was 10,000 years ago, a different presidential candidate ago. But we made some predictions about whether there would be another debate and whether that debate would be between Joe Biden and Donald Trump.

You predicted there would be a second debate, do you remember? Yeah, and I think I predicted it would be Biden. Yeah, and Max thought it would be Biden and Trump, but not a second debate. And you got it right. Well, let's hear. I'm going to have to take the craziest bet here, which is that there will be a second debate, but it will be between Donald Trump and somebody else. I love it. I love that kind of New York room. I'll take odds on this. Go breathe some fresh air.

Go breathe some fresh air. Touch some grass, you said to me. So dismissive. And you were so right. I know. I feel like real failure of imagination by like my fellow self-satisfied members of the pundit class. Why do you think that is that you couldn't see it coming? You know, because there's always wild nonsense speculation or presidential campaigns and stuff like this never happens. Hasn't happened for 50 years.

Part of it is like there's this big theory right now that the Internet is becoming real life. And I think we might just be at the cusp of that where this felt like Internet to you, but it felt like real life to me.

Well, it felt like scripted television, actually. Yeah. We're working. We're going to talk about that some more. But it felt like people's fantasies sort of manifesting in a way. I think it just felt like people's heads had to be like dragged out of the sand. And if they weren't that Thursday night, then like you were, I don't know, sleeping on a different, you were basically Joe.

I think very few had been excited before. But there was just this sense of absolute doom, kind of death march set in. Anyways, Ben, you've got to breathe some fresh air sometimes, you know? Maybe you've got to breathe some fresh air. Well-deserved time. I've got to expand my imagination for politics. I mean, that's the great lesson. Let's take a quick break. We'll be right back.

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And this is the next plot twist of this election. It's July, and there's already foreign interference. Have you seen this? What did I miss? The British singer, Charlie XCX, has transformed the American elections landscape by declaring that Kamala is brat. I mean, this is obviously days ago, old news at this point. But Kamala has gone from cringe to cool. Yeah, kind of an incredible moment. All of the clips of Kamala that have kind of haunted her. Mm-hmm.

Of really since in a way, since she got to Washington from California of being a little wrong footed, answering in word salad, saying sort of awkward, incomprehensible stuff. All this stuff that at best it was kind of dorky and at worst was kind of incomprehensible, but got reprocessed first by just like editors and people making edits on TikTok with Charlie XCX, who then embraced it and

Yeah, and has been sort of reprocessed as cool and actually kind of an amazing. And I think in the way of things that work in, you know, a genuinely organic transformation of Kamala that her paid team had been working so hard to make happen for a long time and had not happened. But did you know before this what BRAT was? Yeah.

I'm not going to attempt to explain it because I feel like this thing of old people trying to explain brat on broadcast is very bad. Do you want to explain brat? Do you relate? I mean, by the way, do you see, do you know the color of brat? It's chartreuse and here you are. And your phone case is chartreuse. Yeah, that's why I got it. No, I actually thought it was going to be semaphore yellow and ordered from Amazon and the color was wrong. You bleed semaphore yellow. I do.

Okay. So Brat, basically, it is the reaction to the clean girl aesthetic. And like fashion always does this, right? You went from quiet luxury to like mob lifestyle. And so all of a sudden that clean girl feminine icon is like being repurposed by Charlie's hit summer album. You know, the song is 365. The album is Brat. The color is chartreuse. And it's basically like

A chick who says what she wants, does what she wants, says some dumb stuff sometimes, like doesn't really care what people think, is honest, is blunt, is whatever. And I am like embodying it today. No, I think that's genuinely your vibe, isn't it? Is it? Yeah. To some degree, yeah. Say some dumb stuff sometimes. You're a little more, actually, you're a little bit more self-control. A little bit more polished. But I'm a little brat. I don't know if Kamala is actually a brat. Yeah, this is the problem, right? Is that...

The Internet reprocessed all these moments of Kamala attempting to be incredibly careful and controlled and inauthentic into the that went so off the rails that they were in some way authentic. Except when she talked about Venn diagrams. I love Venn diagrams.

I really do. I love Venn diagrams. It's just something about those three circles. The Venn diagram thing seemed real. Some of the cooking stuff seems very, very real. But her political performance, I mean, her problem has been that it's so cautious, so inauthentic.

And I guess the question is, can she like in the next days catch up with this image of herself? I think that is the question. I want to talk about whether it will last in a second. But first, I just want to say, while she has become cool, the media has become really uncool. Like, I hope we did an OK job of describing that. But the number of CNN roundtables or others, I mean, we should just play a clip of one. This is Jake Tapper.

Jamie Gangal and, you know, poor Caitlin Collins, the youngest of the tribe sitting there talking about Charlie XCX and what it means. Kamala has branded her Kamala HQ Twitter page with the same aesthetic of the album. That's another Gen Z word, aesthetic. It's even becoming a trend on TikTok.

Special Gen Z correspondent Jamie, what can you tell us about that? So first of all, just for my producer Elizabeth Stewart, who will spit out her coffee as I say this, I am supposed to say, that's brat. Kevin, it's brutal.

And there's a lot of like, I called up my Gen Z producer. I mean, it's terrible. I know. You know what it reminds me of, actually? Do you remember back in the day when like the 2018 Facebook hearings, when Mark Zuckerberg showed up at Congress in like Montana, Senator Roy Blunt was asking him questions about his like, his son loves Instagram. And do you remember that? When I...

sent my business cards down to be printed. They came back from the Senate print shop with the message that was the first business card they'd ever printed a Facebook address on.

There are days when I wonder if Facebook Friends is a little misstated. Yeah, it's sort of a callback to the series, you know, the Internet is a series of tubes. They're just like old people explaining youth culture to each other. Actually, it does kind of make great television, come to think of it, but it is very cringe. That could be the next changing of the guard then. You know, we drove an old man out of politics. Maybe the next they're going to come for all the aged. There's just going to be a pop quiz on whether you know what Brad is, and if not, you're out. Well, the question is, like, again, is the Internet real life? Because if the Internet is real life, we need to get up, you know,

You know, I think, I mean, it's all, it's real youth culture. It is. Right? I mean, it's, it's, it may not be real electoral politics and that's, but it is also real image making is sort of happening really right now. Like this feels like there was a moment in the 90s before I could vote. We're talking about rock the vote. Rock the vote on MTV. But I remember being a kid and like when I'd come to the States in the summer and seeing rock the vote and all these people in Palm Beach, like looking hot in bikinis, talking about Bill Clinton. Yeah.

It kind of feels like we're in that moment again. And then Obama again had that on Facebook. Did you remember Obama Girl? No. There was a song called Crush on Obama. It was very widely viewed. I believe it was a YouTube video. Maybe I can reprise that role. I don't know.

Can you re-apply as a role if we've never had it? You know, I think that's, I don't know. It's between me and Michelle. That's really between you guys. Okay, but how long do we think this will last? I mean, we were talking about this the other day with Max Tani, and he was like, you know, now the reporters are starting to kick into the story, and it'll just be a matter of time since the total press cycle moves in. What do you think? Yeah, I mean, you know, certainly, like, there's been a wave of really positive press of her, too, partly because she's sort of been hidden away, and it's like, who is this person? We're reintroducing her. But right now she has this, like,

This incredibly hot cultural thing that is challenging, I think, for her to become. But she's trying to keep it in the air. And the question with these presidential campaigns, I mean, there's a hundred some days. Like how many of those days can be good days? And if yesterday was, she'll try to make tomorrow and tomorrow. And I think it's to some degree in her hands, but also an incredibly difficult feat to do.

to keep this momentum. Yeah, it's an editorial conversation where like this content is being made and it's about picking up on it, moving fast enough and leaning into it. Do you think she will or will not last for 100 days? You got to take a breath. Well, I mean, the question- Don't be wrong again. No, I mean, I think, no more predictions. Come on, Ben. Jesus.

But the question is, like, how do you take that cultural energy of Brad and in an interview with Lester Holt about what you stand for in the Israel-Palestine conflict, take that, like... And not make word salad of it. What's the Brad answer to that one? That, I think, will be the question. She has been in hiding, but she...

popped her head out on abortion. And she's done, and that's probably a sick way to say that, but you just said, sorry. Oh, yeah, some partial birth metaphor? I mean, I was not making a partial, but no, but she came, she's come out ahead of abortion. People haven't forgotten her on the border, but they have come to know her in a different way on this issue, where at that moment where she was at the rally, she says, And when Congress passes a law to restore reproductive freedoms as President of the United States, I will sign it into law. Yeah.

That's a very remarkable visual moment. She's giving you like a future to believe in. And I think that this is the physics principle, like the act of observing something changes the thing that's being observed. Is it Schrodinger's cat? I think she's getting more confident, like this is going to make her better. And I think 100 days is not long. It's not that long. And I think there's some chance that she keeps them out of my grave. Right. She's and also she navigated. I mean, talk about dexterity, like I'm talking about a messy situation. Yeah. The last three weeks.

of is Joe Biden going to quit? She obviously wants it, but she has to stand by him, but not too close. And she really navigated that. I think part of the reason that there was this huge bandwagon effect, which Democrats may live to regret of getting behind her, was because she'd really navigated just a genuinely messy, complicated political situation. She was elegant. Yeah. And she's just good on stage. She really does. Like she is young, much younger than these guys. How old is she?

59 is young. I mean, that's great. 59 is young. I got decades. I got decades, Ben. We all do. Thank you. I mean, we've reset the whole clock here. It's great. But how do you translate that into...

spontaneous situations which she has not been in. Like the places she fell down, the reason that she withdrew from the public eye, where she just botched an interview about the border so badly that she stopped giving interviews. And the other thing that I think people forget, she's been in the White House for four years. All the things that she didn't know about national politics, because she, by the way, she did sort of fall out of a coconut tree, which was California not long ago.

She now knows. She's been in the White House. And so I think, I mean, she's a different figure than she was four years ago. But I think that can be like a superpower, actually. You really think this is going to last? I think so. And I think it comes down to like, one, Kamala gives good meme, right? She just gives good meme. And we live in a meme world where we have meme stocks, meme coins, including one, like a meme stock from Donald Trump, which is Truth Social, a meme coin from Donald Trump, you know, the DJT coin. And

We basically have a meme presidency in Donald Trump, and I think she gives better meme. So there's that. And then the second part of it is like every time, and this cuts to the Teflon of it all, when she has served a tax—

Her machinery around her, like the same machinery that so quickly rebranded, you know, Harris Biden HQ to Brad HQ is going to seize on that and just push it to the culture. And so are all of these women who are so online. You see this right now with the 2021 Childless Cat Lady comments from J.D. Vance. We're effectively run in this country via the Democrats, via our corporate oligarchs.

by a bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives and the choices that they've made. And so they want to make the rest of the country miserable too. And it's just a basic fact. You look at Kamala Harris, Pete Buttigieg, AOC, the entire future of the Democrats. Yeah, it's part of his broader theory of the world where people with more kids should get more votes. Yes. Yes.

It's like it's this whole pronatalist. We've talked about gender roles like it is alarming to women. And I think people are going to dig out these kinds of attacks from three years ago. I should say, like, completely ridiculous to call Kamala Harris, who is a stepmother of two people, a childless woman or Pete Buttigieg, a childless cat lady. In fact, I don't think he has a cat. I don't think he's a lady. And I not a cat, not a lady and not childless. Adopted.

Seems unwise to go around calling people names when you're trying to get their votes. We have seen Kamala Harris on the offensive in media as a prosecutor. I mean, those are the kind of strongest clips of her interrogating people in Senate.

But we haven't seen her on the defensive. Women sometimes look weak, right? They look defensive. And it's just ammunition for her, like her being on the defensive all of a sudden looks good, looks cool. She has an army of women, like literally the women's march, right? I mean, I guess I think that like you have a idea of her.

That is very appealing. And it's been almost with very little input from her because the meme is composed of terrible gaffes she made that almost ruined her career that have been repackaged. And I think it's now can she actually be the person that you're describing?

Or when she's asked complicated questions, will she answer in Selina Meyer style or word sound? And I think 100 days. And you're really talking about like 60 till people start voting, right? Yeah. So maybe you actually don't have to be who you are. You can just sort of surf on the memes for a couple of days. Yeah. We'll see. One thing's for sure. J.D. Vance and Kamala Harris are both selling streamers again because they're

You know, Veep is taking off. We're going to talk to Frank Rich about that in a minute when we come back. And Hillbillyology, you know, didn't pop in 2020. Very bad reviews. But now top 10 on Netflix. Yeah. Thank you, J.D. Vance. Thank you, J.D. Vance. Let's take a quick break and we'll be right back.

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I know you love Veep. I do. I love Veep. Is it accurate? There are bits of it that are actually quite accurate. That is a clip of Kamala Harris just saying how much she loved the show Veep and talking to Stephen Colbert. Do you love Veep, Ben? I do love Veep. I mean, it's impossible not to love.

But you're like a legitimate junkie, right? I am a junkie. The show is so good. But I am a junkie in spite of my more idealistic self. Do you like identify with one of the characters? Sue. I feel like I'm Sue the receptionist. Oh, I thought, I mean, there's, you know, what's her name? The chief of staff. Amy Chomsky. Yeah, I feel like the sort of earnest, hardworking, basically idealistic. Yeah, sleeping with that guy who's like the comms director. Just to make some poor choices. I mean, yeah. But I do think...

It's in spite of my better senses because I really like...

idealist kind of television, particularly around government. And I feel like we need more of it in this country. I really liked like West Wing. Yeah, you're a West Wing kid, right? I'm a West Wing kid. Yeah, I mean, I really liked it. And so I was, when I started watching Veep, I'm like, I love Julia Louis-Dreyfus, but I don't like the dislike of government in the United States. And then I ended up just like joyously watching Veep by probably more than once. So it's like more a guilty pleasure for you? It's a guilty pleasure. It's just like a fantastic show of if anyone has not seen it. It is basically a bunch of

kind of mindless Muppets.

running around trying to bear hug, you know, the second in command who has no virtual power to get closer to her lack of virtual power and somehow succeeding like in spite of themselves. And I think that that it was just great television. Yeah. It's a fabulous show. Yeah. And real Washington in a way too. Yeah. And kind of genius. Sort of like the everyone moths to the flame of power even when it's kind of fake power. Yes. You know, you will cling on to it. And that is what happens in this show. But

But also just genius writing, genius creativity, like the fact that you never see the president when Selena is Veep, you know, you as an audience are like relegated to this world of like inconsequence. Yes, the sort of second tier bubble across the street in the OUOB. Exactly. And you have no idea of what's going on there. And yet it is a circus. But today we're going to have on one of the executive producers of that show, Frank Rich, someone who you know.

Yeah. I mean, Frank's really like one of the – has one of the legendary media careers. He was, you know, wrote about politics, wrote about all sorts of stuff as a young journalist. But when I sort of came to know him was the theater critic for The New York Times, which is this incredibly powerful New York job. He was the guy who could open or basically close a show if he didn't like it or, you know, it would run for years if Frank Rich liked it. And, you

And then left that role to vanish into Hollywood and kind of emerge with a couple of the really great, you know, the absolute great pieces of the golden age of television being Veep and Succession, which he executive produced for HBO and just kind of emerged as a role.

Yeah, very unusual, genuinely astute, knowledgeable observer, both of real politics and of the arts and just incredible character. Perfect credentials to get to where he is. Yeah, totally. You know, op-ed columnist, writer, theater critic, observer for so long. You told me he was what, the

Butcher of Broadway. Yeah, his, I mean, when I literally first met him was when his son, his seven-year-old son came over for a play date with my little sister. And this very nice Upper West Side dad, you know, dropped her off and I was home and sort of collected her. How old were you? I was, you know, I must have been 14. And then I told my parents that Frank Rich had come by and they were like, oh,

Like, oh, my God, he's legendary. He's feared. He's the butcher of Broadway. Yeah. So I'm not sure that's like a sobriquet he really loves. And it was a long time ago. Yeah. Should we be afraid of Frank Rich? No. I mean, you know, when I'm hard up for ideas about what to write about and just, you know, need a column, I often call Frank and say, hey, what's on your mind? He's just a very incredible range, actually, sort of an observer. And still writes for New York Magazine. Well, I'm very excited to meet him. I'm a big fan of his work. Let's have on Frank Rich. Thank you.

Welcome, Frank. Thank you. Nice to be here. Yeah. Thanks for joining us. It's good to see you. Good to see you. In Another Life, you were a theater critic.

And I wonder what would be your quick review of the last month of this presidential race as a piece of drama? It's insane, isn't it? First of all, it almost would have to be cinematic because I don't know how this would even work on a stage. There's so many events, so many locations, things happening with so little warning. You couldn't develop a scene. Has it been a good show, Frank, you think? What's your 10-word review of the show, of this presidential campaign? Completely unbelievable, absolutely.

cardboard characters unmotivated story events pretty bad direction you know get that speech down you know for heaven's sakes

These are good notes. 90 minutes of gibberish is a bridge too far. So, yeah, I think it would have, you know, script notes on this would be extreme. But it's a must watch, right? Must watch. Oh, yeah. It's watching at various times a train wreck.

A tornado, sometimes literally a tornado has played a sub role in Houston or whatever the hurricanes of the past month. And sometimes a rocket ship, like, I mean, Kamala feels like a rocket ship right now. Yes. And that's one of the really unexpected to me plot events. The one thing I never predicted, I mean, I didn't predict any of it really, but the one thing that really was a surprise is the Democrats could get their act together in two minutes and that she would take off like a rocket.

And so unlike the Democratic Party, it was almost like, is there some other thing going on here we don't know about? Maybe they'll live to regret it. I'm not sure. Anyway. We were just discussing, Ben and I before this, how Kamala just shifted from cringe to cool very quickly in the culture. And one of the things is in 2022, The Daily Show did a mashup of Selina Meyer versus Kamala Harris. And it had a very different valence then. Let's play a clip.

Talking about the significance of the passage of time, right? The significance of the passage of time. So when you think about it, there is great significance to the passage of time. Whatever we have in store

Obesity is a serious disease, and it needs to be taken seriously. You need to get to go?

and need to be able to get where you need to go to do the work and get home. I hope that clarifies the issue, and this can be the last word on those words. Certain issues are just settled. Clearly we're not. No, that's right, and that's why I do believe that we are living, sadly, in real unsettled times.

I have to say, on Veep, there are a couple of writers who specialized in writing political speeches, particularly for Selena, that literally have absolutely no content. The word salad of all time, and if people can't get enough of Veep, we've actually had a legitimate book publisher publish a fake article.

campaign memoir by Selina Meyer. Oh my gosh. And it was written by Billy Kimball, a writer on the show, a very funny writer, also worked with Al Franken. And it's like 150 pages of slop like that, you know, anecdotes of her childhood that have no payoff or no point or designed to prove that she loved her pet horse, you know, anyway. By the way, as a writer, I don't think there are many books that could be written by AI, but I think that the Selina Meyer's autobiography is

Could have been a fantastic chat GPT project. Completely. And basically the AI stuff I've read, it's a little – for now, it'll change soon, within a year. But for now, it's a little cleverer than the AI version. But yes, that's a great point. And by the way, Kamala Harris, when we were writing V, didn't exist as a national political personality. So this was all based on –

everyone else. And then, you know, there's a little bit often when Veep has been sort of weaponized through the years, it's been often aimed at female politicians. You know, it was true of Hillary too. And as Dave Mandel, who was the last showrunner of Veep would say, Selina is much closer to Trump or

Or also at various times, Mike Pence, who also spoke in complete platitudes and led nowhere. And then Trump in terms of her ethos. So it was a little unfair to Harris. But anyway, it's interesting how it's now flipped and it's all cool. Yes. We want to get to those themes in a minute.

the gender of it all, the inspiration for the characters. So we're going to ask you about all that. But the flip right now, you know, back then in 2022, this was a critique of Kamala. Now Veep has weirdly become an endorsement of her in this new kind of Kamala is brat culture. So what do you attribute that to? Is it escapism? Is it the devolution of our politics? Is it some kind of evolution or reclaiming?

of our culture? What is the flip? You know, I have to say I'm more of a student of it than at this point than an expert. I didn't see it coming and the whole brat thing I didn't see coming for her. I also was impressed by her campaign's ability to seize on it in a nanosecond and use it as branding and all the rest. But I don't know. I honestly don't know. And I think, frankly, part of it is it's a younger generation than I am and I'm probably not the right person to ask.

But there is something about her from afar and not knowing her that she sort of has a way of going with it. Maybe it's unintentional, but she does have a kind of humor about her. You know, it's not like she's cracking jokes, but she has a slightly humorous persona that maybe is now perceived as more chivalrous.

charming than it originally was if people had gotten to see her more in public life. But it also may be a factor of two old candidates, one now gone. Just the fact that she's now the young person in the room, I think counts for something. So geriatric are our politics.

that a 60 or 59 year old can be claimed as a hit by a younger culture. Do you think like, I mean, when it comes to Selena, that the vice presidency is sort of inherently funny? Vice presidency has always been funny and it's had a history even in satirical comedy dating back, you know, almost a century. I mean, there was a musical by Councilman and I guess Gershwin's

On Broadway in the early 30s, the one that pulled surprise called Of the Eyes Sing, and the vice president was a complete buffoon in it, made fun of the musical numbers. So it's a staple of American culture. It's always been there. Which was conceived, by the way, by an Englishman, Armando Iannucci, just went for the motherlode on it.

A lot of people, like there's this Mandela effect happening now, some false memories being formed that Selina Myers is inspired by Kamala Harris, which, as you said, is not the case. Kamala was not on the national stage at that time. But is she part of the inspiration for Kemi Talbot? Because there is this – I'm going to give a spoiler alert for anyone who's not watched Weep. There's this very competent black DA turned senator who runs against Selina, right?

in season two. And then you learn later at the end of the show, big spoiler alert, at Selina's funeral, that she became president. Right. No. I mean, as someone who was present, first of all, in season two, it was still Armando. Most of the writers were British. All the writers were British then. And I don't think any of them had heard of Kamala Harris. And keep in mind, this is so early. We made the pilot in 2011. So we're talking about

a dozen years ago when we started the show. It's been off the air for, what, five years or something like that. And so, no, it was all just too early. And when Dave Mandel took over the show for the last three seasons, and it was mainly American writers, she still wasn't much of a presence. I was thinking about it because I remembered when she started to get some national attention, but this is like when she was running for Senate.

Maybe if that. She was attorney general. I remember being in the room and the writers would be paramount and asking a lot of the writers, what about Kamala Harris? I was just curious because they were all mainly active Democrat, California Democrats. And there was not much talk about it at all. In fact, it was general sentiment that Eric Garcetti was presidential timber.

To place it in time. So it really, there had been a couple of politicians that have, over time, without being specific, because some of them are

She's still in office, but there are people who have been around a lot longer that we thought of. But no, she just wasn't a factor. So it's coincidence. You invented her. I mean, did you talk to or, you know, any of the folks who had been in or around these roles to Cheney or Palin or I guess, you know, sans Hillary Clinton feels...

Like she lived in that world a bit. Al Gore. I mean, were you calling them up? I know that Julia at the very beginning reached out to Al Gore, who of course is the person you want to go to person for any kind of comedy. And, uh,

I'm being facetious. And, you know, we definitely reached out to certain kinds of people in Washington. And even at one point, we could wash and meet people. But it was not politicians. It was staffers. We were really interested in staffers, political strategists. We reached out to, at one point, Ben Ginsberg, now back in the news, the Republican election lawyer when we had a tight election.

But not really politicians, because I think we got the sense that any politician would put in a performance for us and would be useless. We just get the image. The one politician who did come, and I unfortunately...

missed it because I was working, it was a week when I was on succession, was Mitt Romney came and spent a day or a long lunch in the writer's room and brought his wife and farmed the hell out of everyone. Everyone just loved him.

which was, you know, it's not the politics of the room, but he was apparently quite funny and charming. But I can't say that you really see any of it was late in the day on Veep, and I don't think you see any resembling Mitt Romney in Veep at all. It's funny because you often hear the female comparisons, and you talked about this before, like when Veep is weaponized, it's often weaponized against female politicians.

And of course, like women in politics, they have to walk such a fine line. They have to be approachable, but not ridiculous. They have to be powerful, but somehow warm, friendly, but not flirtatious, not too feminine, but not at all masculine. And, you know,

You play with this in Veep. There's actually a great clip of Selina Meyer talking about being a woman. Most actually wants to know if you've changed your stance on abortion, R.E. So you could say as a woman, I believe. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. I can't identify myself as a woman. People can't know that. Men hate that. And women who hate women hate that, which I believe is most women. Don't you agree with that? Yes. And ma'am, we should really bag this up.

Pretty genius. Is there something about the performance of politics from women that is so easily satirized? Yes, because it fits in very well with the Veep concept, too. By the way, the memoir that Salina, quote, wrote was called Woman First, Colon First Woman. Anyway, look.

Armando's original concept of Veep was someone who is the second most powerful person in the world who has literally no power. And that kind of secondary status of a vice president has fit the secondary status of women, sadly, in American politics. They always have to – as you just said, they can't be too feminine. They can't be too funny. They can't be this. They can't be that.

I think that's beginning to change, and this election cycle may well change it further. But that secondary status, it fits in with being a veep, sadly. And so it's very much something on our mind, on writers' minds, the show, and also on Julia Lee Dreyfuss' mind. She loved this kind of material because she'd also dealt with real life in Hollywood, even as a successful actor. Could Veep have been a man?

Yes, it could have been, but that's an interesting question. But it was never discussed. It was always a woman.

And probably in part for the reason I said, it accentuates the comedy even more when it's a woman who has to fight like hell to get anywhere anyway in Washington. And again, keep in mind, the show was conceived five years, a little more than five years before Hillary Clinton ran for president. Do you think, does J.D. Vance have comic potential? Oh, he, yes. Oh.

Yeah. I actually worked on a show that didn't happen. It wasn't a comedy, but a couple of years ago where he was already, after Hillbillyology, already a much – a version of him was a much mocked character. No one would have recognized he wasn't – the character wasn't in politics, but he was sort of a little Peter Thiel-like with J.D. Vance stirred in. Yeah, he's already showing that potential. I think the guy comes across as such a loser. Yeah.

You know, everyone's saying he's this great politician. He's so great in the stump. The speech of the convention was completely tepid. He seems to have no, I'm not even talking about his views, which are also, in my view, lamentable to put it mildly. He was terrible on the stump so far. He's subservient to Trump. He keeps stepping into it.

And one of the things I love, too, is he's presented as this military guy. You know, he went into the Marines. Do you know what he did in the Marines? No, what did he do? He was a journalist.

He was a PR guy. Hey, that's honorable work, Frank. Come on. How low can you get? How low can you get? But like Selina Meyer, he contains like multitudes. Exactly. And seems to have absolutely no convictions of his own, which is very Selina Meyer-like. We saw throughout the show, she'd just turn on a dime depending on where her next meal was coming from.

And, yeah, he's that. And I'm just struck. I mean, I find he has no charisma as a political figure at all. I'm not sure he's built for the national stage. We'll see. We may not get a chance to see because Trump may just stick him in a closet. Yeah. I mean, there is this sort of degrading, humiliating quality to being vice president should they win that sometimes it elevates people, but sometimes it really compresses them. I mean, he's like Kamala Harris.

barely escaped in some sense. Well, I mean, the way she played the last few weeks has just been impeccable in the sense of just so elegant because there's a way for all that ambition to get in your way as it kind of gets in Selena's way when she's told she can be president. In spite of herself, she makes it through. I couldn't agree with you more. And that's one of the things that surprised me. I felt...

She didn't pitch perfect from the moment of the debate. The way she picked up the ball for Biden when he should have been out there and wasn't was quite impressive and struck, as you said, struck this tone that hard to do. And then as we now know from sort of morning after stories, she's

There was also a lot going on behind the scenes that said that she could hit the ground running should Biden step down. Yeah. There is, Frank, something so darkly comic about Veep. And I think of it in the sense that, you know, growing up, being a kid, I watched West Wing, which was at that time the great liberal fantasy during the Bush era, right? And...

I think Veep is just the opposite of that. Selena, you know, spoiler alert, sells her soul, as you've said. Even her most loyal henchman, Gary, the bad carrier. Even he falls out of love with her by the end. It's a total contrast to the kind of moral rectitude of the West Wing or Madam Secretary. Do you think that's a bygone? Because, like, those are very much network shows and Veep is very much, you know, cable streamer show. Do you think that's just a bygone of the culture or...?

We couldn't have any positive interpretation of our government anymore? That's a good question. It certainly is for now. I mean, I have to say we very much were – Madam Secretary was after – I mean, started after us. But we were very much the unwest wing. We had no intention. No one in the show, no one in Veep has a good motive for anything.

I think, you know, culture does shift. And there have been periods, you know, there was Mr. Smith goes to Washington, you know, in the between the wars and around the New Deal. And there was some idealism. And then you think of what happened in the, say, in the 60s, it was a completely different cycle. And

And also there was before that the Manchurian candidate, which was still during the Cold War. And then it shifted to warm and cuddly again. It shifted back. Veep may have well been a leader in that. It wasn't alone, I don't think. But it could shift again, but probably –

Not fast. I mean, it's going to take a while. I wouldn't want to go out and pitch, you know, the Ted Lasso of politics now. If not Ted Lasso, have you ever thought about or put your hand to writing something that

inspiring, idealistic about politics? Or is that outside your range or the moment? You know something? I'll tell you very honestly. I grew up in Washington. I was not in a political family, but I grew up in the city of Washington. My stepfather was what you'd now call a case-free lawyer. He was a fixer for corporations and so very, very cynical about politics. And the other thing about growing up in Washington when I did was I

You'd see all these school groups come, you know, come buses and they'd visit the Capitol and the White House and all that. And yet it was a city that was at that time, particularly very, a lot of poverty, people living in alleys. It was such a contrast between the official sets of Washington and what it was actually like to live in that city.

So, I guess it is out of my range. I always saw what was going on behind the scenes in some way long before I thought of being a journalist. So, it inculcated me at a very young age. Well, we'll ask you to color outside the lines a little bit maybe then for this last question. But

What is the most earnest West Wingy interpretation of Biden's actions and stepping down? And then I'll ask you for the more pragmatic VP take. The earnest interpretation is, of course, he did it for the good of the country. He saw he couldn't win.

He believes in the values that he was preaching as president and as a candidate and wanted to further them and felt his vice president was the person who could carry it forward. So that's what I think a lot of people, certainly people around him are saying that is wrong.

the earnest version, I think. Do you agree? Yeah, I think that's the earnest version. I think the question is if you buy it. And that's certainly, by the way, the version that you're seeing out there with the Washington Post and New York Times. You know, you're seeing a lot of op-eds and ads running the brave act of the president. Yeah, of course, one of the fascinating turns is to see the press turn on the dime. My feeling is

He obviously didn't want to go. I felt that even came through last night in his address, that people got through to him and convinced him that there's no way he could win, that finally people penetrated that inner circle and showed him hard data. And he was smart enough and I think sentient enough to realize that

to go out with dignity and do the right thing for my party and the right thing to try to bring down Trump. I think the Kamala part of it, I'm not sure what the real version is. I don't know. I'm willing to believe they had a good relationship. I honestly don't know. It wasn't conspicuously bad. Some relationships between presidents and vice presidents have been like Kennedy and Johnson or

even, you know, Trump and Pence. But he convinced himself what the right thing was. And it turns out, politically, it seems to have been the right call for now. We were talking before about whether, can she keep this ball in the air? Can she keep this going in this cultural moment that she somehow happened into? What do you think? I don't know. I think one thing that's helping, going to help her, is that Trump really isn't campaigning.

And she now seems fresh. I think that's the thing people forget. Campaigns are about that, getting to know the candidate as well. And there's a curiosity. I mean, forget the age thing and everything else. There's just a curiosity about Kamala that will sustain. It's like you keep watching because you don't yet know the answer versus with Trump, you kind of know the answer. And so I think that works in her favor. I agree. And I think, you know,

I've heard the story of her childhood and her parents, and I've covered politics and I follow politics, but I'm a little sketchy on it. I'm happy to hear it again. It's a new story. And the Trump story...

Partially because of Trump himself. We just know it by heart and it never changes. Maybe people will watch it the way they're watching Veep, just stay glued to their screens. They'll be in the hero position for time to come. Maybe so. And maybe she can be, you know, intentionally funny. We'll see. That is the test. That's the test. There's so many things we don't know. What is the convention going to be? The show business component of it too really interests me because we're

Went through the George Clooney moment and all of that. Now everyone's on board, including George Clooney. And how's that going to play out? What's Taylor Swift going to do? There's so many interests for you. Who's she going to interact with? And all of it's going to drive Trump nuts. That's the thing. The other thing that she has going for her is a woman, a woman of color,

He can't help himself. He cannot help himself. I mean, also, J.D. Vance is really helping by saying that, you know, women who don't have children are worthless. Yes. Gay men who don't have children, you know, so he's, it's going to be interesting. Aren't you riveted by it all? Yeah, totally.

helps you make history too. Like it's, it bonifies your legacy, I guess. And leaving feedback of it just, it would be a good thing in general, I think. So, but, and look, if that happens, that might, to answer your previous question,

turn the culture around again. Maybe you can believe in West Wing again. Oh, God. We're going to have to watch a bunch of sappy, heroic president movies again. Oh, God. At least we won't have to watch the episode that Aaron Sorkin wrote last week. The Mitt Romney. The Democrats nominating Mitt Romney. That was bizarre. One plot twist, two outlandish. Yeah.

Short-lived. He did have to quickly retract via Melina's Twitter account, but idiotic. Ridiculous. Totally out of touch, right? Yep. All right. Thank you so much, Frank, for being with us. Thanks, Frank. It's nice to see you. This is great. Great to talk to you. Great to see you both. And thank you. Do it again, I hope.

He's fantastic. He's great. Just totally unique kind of range. Totally unique. I hope for a West Wing rendition. See, I watch Madam Secretary and those kinds of shows because I'm like... I loved Scandal. That was my favorite one. That's also not good. I thought that was the most realistic one. Ben, really? Yeah. Because it was like... Was it like murder? Yeah. Some of the details were out of it. But I think like...

One of the things about these shows that Veep sort of captures too, like, I mean, I do think that some of the idealism is real. And I kind of came up in House of Cards world, where everyone is a total cynic. And what I liked about Scandal- When you came up, were you like 20 or you were 20? No, I mean, that was the big show. That was like the big show of my, like, I guess when I was a young political reporter. Got a cameo at some point. It was very exciting. You had a cameo? Well, they showed a video at the correspondence dinner where I was talking to Kevin Spacey on the phone. It was

big moment for me. But the thing about that, like there, everyone is so cynical and stands for nothing. And my actual experience of Washington is more true believers. And that was what Scandal was about. And in some way, Veep too. And incompetent true believers is also a big thing. I think the incompetent true believer thing is real. But I don't know. I...

I feel like so much of government has been gutted and there is this complete distrust in this country of government. And we've just grown up like millennials, Gen Zers in particular, growing up with this like kind of government as joke culture. Joke or conspiracy. Joke or conspiracy, but either way, not good. And I think that kind of...

Like you get in what you put out, right? So like if that's what you want to draw to the roles, it's what you want. People will become memes and caricatures of themselves in those roles. And also you kind of have adverse selection. You don't get the earnest West Wingers into the White House or into the administration or into office. And I think that's sad. I'm so idealistic. Yeah. I mean, and Trump was elected to, you know, the people who voted for him because they hated everyone. Yeah.

Yeah. And they wanted someone who's going to come in and clean house. Yeah. So you're suggesting that kind of Hollywood poisoned all of our belief in government and now got us Trump. I know having had that one cameo in House of Cards, you don't want to sell out your Hollywood class then. But yeah. No, but I do think that the culture, like the mockery of government.

with the kind of historical distrust of government that brought a lot of people to this country. Like the story of America is a number of people who are persecuted by their governments or don't trust their governments come here and make it on their own, quote unquote. There isn't a lot of space for luck or nationality or compassion. And I do think that one of the beautiful things about West Wing is like while the

Yeah, and people making decisions for the right – weighing decisions heavily for the right reason, which –

really is a lot of what people of both parties in government do is make hard decisions, mostly for the right reasons, with a lot of VP incompetence and political calculation. At minimum, you're giving people something to lean into, like the Obama campaign leaned into the West Wing. And I'm going to say the Trump campaign seemed like, you know, Veep on steroids with the kind of characters. But let's take a quick break. And we're going to be back with Max Taney to talk Black Spots.

This week on our branded segment from Think with Google, we're talking with Google VP of Marketing Josh Spanier about the lessons marketers learn from political campaigns and why campaigns can take bigger risks than brands. This has been called the year of elections with 2 billion people voting. Of course, we have the U.S. election in November. How do big elections impact marketeers? So elections impact us in marketing, but probably not in the way you think.

Now, here in the U.S., if you are a local brand selling products or trying to get people to come to your store and you happen to live in a swing state, you may be impacted more. There may be less media ads for you to buy, or maybe because of all the money flooding in, you actually are going to have to pay more for your commercials. But I think the most interesting part of the impact of elections is what happens after the election. Over the years, when you have an election, there is a winner and a loser.

The winners are heroes. The losers are abject failures. The binary natures of elections happen there. And coming out of the D.C. Beltway, there have been a succession of election winners. Think James Carver. Think Karl Rowe. Think Mark Penn. Even Nate Silver.

They have actually spun up and become very attractive to marketers to learn how do they do their micro-targeting or their persuasion or their polling. Those companies coming out of the D.C. Beltway, taking their political skills, honed on elections, and bringing them to major marketing organizations in the years that follow of the success of whether they won or if they lost. Do you find that commercial marketing follows political marketers'

Or does it go both ways? Are the political campaigns also stealing the best of private sector? I think what you're touching on, Ben, is the digital transformation of our society. The incredible technologies that Google and others have invented have enabled

things that never were possible before. And that's actually created all sorts of opportunities with creators on YouTube or short form video advertising on YouTube Shorts or podcasts and a number of other ways of connecting and engaging with people. And what I see is

we're all sort of navigating through these digital transformations of what's working, what's not working, what are these new platforms, what are these new surfaces? Sometimes we will learn from a political company. Other times they will see something that we've done. But as you and I saw when we went to the Cannes Advertising Festival,

Every industry is leaning into digital transformation. So we're actually finding learnings from across the board, not just those two directions of marketing and politics. Yeah, that's interesting. I do wonder if the politicians, because they have a higher appetite for risk, because it's just so binary, like either you win or you're out of business. And so they're sort of more willing to experiment with riskier stuff. Ben, I think you're totally right.

I've worked with brands my whole career and no one wants to cause a crisis or a scandal. There is no good outcome when you have that happen to a brand. So that inherently makes you conservative as you'll go to market.

Politicians, I think, are much more flexible, much more adaptable, and they're much more short-term. They can turn a crisis into a win, and they can turn wins into crises, actually, unsurprisingly. But in regulated industries like marketing, it's actually much better to be planned for the long term, to be sustaining and to be organized such you avoid the worst possible swings of every situation.

Back in the studio, Max Tani here with us. I'm here. The only person not in chartreuse. Yeah, that's true. I don't really, you know, it's not, I'm colorblind, so I'm not really about whatever color. People are like, brat, it's green. Like, okay. Are you just saying, you're saying you're colorblind as sort of a sensitivity thing or a...

You're colorblind in a political sense? Are you interrogating me? No, no. But I do think that it's interesting. You know, Ben, you are technically my boss and you're making a joke about my genetic disability. Yeah, I was going to say. It's interesting. I mean, I'm just pointing it out. We should not only strike this but erase it from the recording. But the technical term for what you're describing is post-color. Right. Post-color. That's what I was going for. I don't see color. Post-color. This is the disability joke I was trying to make. Yeah. Yeah.

Sorry, Max. All right. Well, let's move on before we have HR issues. So one of the one of the blind spots this week for conservatives or whoever really is, you know, the RFK voter, I can't really tell exactly where that person exists on the political spectrum. Middle of the road anti-vaxxer, I think. Yeah. Which I think that's right wing at this point. Right. So if he is elected president, RFK Jr. plans to create a

quote, wellness farms where people will spend three or four years harvesting organic vegetables to cure their addiction to antidepressants and ADHD meds. This is according to Mother Jones, who reported this week that during an event that was billed as a Latino town hall, RFK unveiled his plan to overhaul addiction treatment programs. And here's what he said.

He said, I'm going to create these wellness farms where they can go to get off illegal drugs, off of opiates, but also other psychiatric drugs if they want to, to get off of SSRIs, to get off benzos, to get off Adderall, and to spend time, as much time as they need, three or four years if they need it, to learn medicine.

to get reparented, to reconnect with communities. And he said that on these farms, residents would grow their own organic foods, which would help them recover from addiction because, quote, a lot of the behavioral issues are food related. And another crucial rule on the farm, and this is just it's important to understand, is that because if you'll be there for three or four years,

Cell phones and other screens, he said, would be prohibited. For years. So to get off of your SSRIs or ADHD medication, you're going to go to a farm for three to four years to make organic vegetables and there's no screens. What do you guys think? I have a couple of reactions. First of all, when you said he was going to make people go to a farm for three to four years, because we've just been discussing J.D. Vance and you said to harvest, I thought you're going to say they're eggs.

See, I thought you said organs. We were each auto-completing that sentence. You thought organs. I thought eggs. No, this is a classic traditional farm. You're going to grow some vegetables and some fruits and you'll be there. He's really tapping into the beauty and wellness culture that has just taken over.

our society and the anti-screen moment of Jonathan Haidt. Is he tapping into anything? No, no, no. I think he's tapping into something, guys. Guys, this is classic old school granola stuff. This is like, you guys are putting like modern frames, like this is the most classic old school hippie granola. This is the crunchy to granola access. Yeah, we talked about this. Raw milk, we've talked about it before. Raw milk is another one. But there is a kind of cultural obsession with

wellness that's happened. Like, I think one could argue, like, the amount of wellness and self-help books have made us an even more navel-gazing, less kind of communal society. But this is making a community of that kind of culture. And there's a backlash to therapy, a backlash to SSRIs, a backlash to, like, a lot of psychological treatment that, you know, it's also a big part of Scientology. I really think that mostly this is just a new frame for something that's

existed for a long time. I mean, I'm sure you guys were kind of around when there was like the woofing thing. Do people still do that? That was like a big thing when I was in college, which was like, it was basically like an early version of Airbnb. This is how it was described to me in college is people would go and like stay on a farm and do some work in exchange for being able to stay in some place. A few of my friends did it during college. Cult? Is that the word for that? Cult? How is this going to be

funded? Like who's going to pay for this? So actually, you know what? He did say that the way that it was going to be funded was based off of taxes on legalized marijuana. That was the way that he was going to. I mean, this is a real plan. This is a policy position. So to me, I kind of think that this sounds pretty great besides the timeline. Like to me, it's really more of, you know, I could do this for three weeks, maybe even like three months. That sounds great. It sounds like a vacation.

But like three or four years, no screens to get off of SSRs. Like I think at some point if I'm there for three years and I haven't done it, like I'm good to go. I'm not going to keep you there against your will. I'm just like instead of going to the Mandarin Oriental Spa, I'm going here for the taxpayer-funded one-week digital detox with organic –

I mean, it is a real, I mean, you know, the Soviets had great sanatoriums. I mean, that was a real thing that workers could get shipped off to a big hotel on the seaside and recover. I mean, it's strange that it has this right wing coding because as you say, it comes out of a real left wing tradition. And that's big government. But I think weirdly, like this is kind of an incentive to do SSRI so you can go on holiday and eat organics.

Kombucha. Yeah. What do I have to do? Do I have to prove? That's true. Do I have to prove that I've taken something like that? I mean, I don't think he's going to be president, but something's going to happen with that strand of politics that he embodies. The whole thing doesn't sound particularly that bad. And it's honestly not that far away from, you know, like these volunteer programs. Like, didn't Obama have that volunteer program? Yeah. Maybe he's campaigning for HUD.

Secretary under Trump administration. Well, that was actually what he wanted, right? He was basically like, I want to trade. He wanted health and human services. He wanted health and human services. Health and human services plus Airbnb. And Trump, to his credit, was kind of like, no.

Well, what is the other blind spot, Max? Well, the other blind spot, this is a bit of a stretch. I have to kind of admit that, which is, you know, for all the non-conservative readers of The Wall Street Journal who may have missed the story, the journal this week reported that stealth shopping is on the rise. The journal basically said that according to a survey last year, nearly two thirds of people who live with a spouse or significant other hid a purchase from their partner over the last year.

A quarter of them hit a clothing purchase and one in 10 manipulated financial records to conceal their spending. Manipulated financial records? Yes. Their spouse or partner? So basically, the journal interviewed a clinical psychologist who said that she had seen a jump in stealth shopping in recent years, which was fueled by what she attributed to the rise of influencers. Quote, when you see someone online pushing something, you feel more pressure to buy it, even if you can't afford it.

So have you guys done any stealth shopping recently? Do you have this kind of guilt around shopping or shame or any sort of accountability? No, all my shopping is in, like, you know, shameless display, including to, like, whoever my partner might be in the moment. But I guess if you share finances, maybe there's some kind of different reality. Did you stealth buy that phone cover? No, I've never, like, had the sort of energy to hide a purchase. But definitely, like, impulse purchase, buying.

books in particular and then feel like uh leona's gonna see it and be like what are you doing you're ever gonna read that it's small things but like and if i think if i had the sort of wherewithal slash if i like could buy it in cash and not be judged in that way i would prefer to stealth shop your stealth shopping books that leona those are my impulse you're not gonna read that's not really so wholesome they don't talk about anybody having a problem stealth shopping books uh i think it's like i think they're

like one out of 10 who are hiding their expenses. I want to know what percentage of that is OnlyFans and Ashley Madison. Like, are those considered purchases? That's a traditional, pretty traditional stealth form of camera. No, but I do think that this is a real thing. I mean, I know that in my life, like I think my girlfriend is appalled by the amount of online shopping I do. I actually have the opposite reaction to Instagram and social media where like there's so much pushing of stuff, like constantly seeing ads for like these photos

flat shoes that become heels that become flats, like kind of interesting. Ingestible beauty, da-da-da. Like I just don't, I'm not interested in consuming any of it. It makes me actually like want to be more of a naturalist. Yeah, no, I definitely feel that way about, in particular, Instagram. I actually think that this is one of the things that kind of cheapens their ads is if something is being served to me relentlessly, I'm like, this is obviously not something that I want to seek out because it's

It's constantly kind of finding me. But at the same time, I really do understand this idea that people have guilt over the amount of time that they spend shopping now because I actually think the ads and the targeting have gotten so good. They've gotten so good at following you around forever. So I understand people feeling like they have a little bit of shame about what they're doing.

You got to do some SSRIs. Get to that farm where you cannot shop anymore. Does the shopping addiction qualify me? I think the shopping addiction qualifies me to go live on the farm. I think blind spot A can kind of cure blind spot two, which could feed you into blind spot A. But I'll need to buy some new clothes for the farm first, so I look good on

and I've got the appropriate. What are you thinking? I've actually got some good gardening shoes, some good gardening clogs that like I got a few years ago. I have a whole camping outfit I bought for like one camping trip in Montana. Yeah, exactly. So I'll need to do that first. Before we go, should we do a predictions round? Because it turned out so well for Ben last time. Absolutely. Why don't we do predictions for Veep, who's going to be Kamala Harris's

vice presidential pick? I think she's, I mean, she historically plays it safe. And I think the safe pick is, safest pick is probably Mark Kelly, former astronaut, senator from Arizona. Kind of makes, checks a lot of boxes. Gabby Gifford's husband. Gabby Gifford's husband, yeah. Although I think like we're going to come out of this, like this moment in which Democrats are like totally high on their own supply and feel like they're winning. And she's going to look at polling that will either say, ah, she could win, play it safe. Or we'll say she's totally screwed. She's got to do like a Sarah Palin, like Hail Mary pick. Yeah.

And I think that'll be clear in a couple of weeks. It's just not clear now. Got it. Max, what do you think? I really think that there's no indication in what way she's leaning. So I'm going to kind of make a prediction that I think she's going to go with the governor. She spent a lot of time with Roy Cooper, swing state guy, North Carolina, a place where they got kind of close last time, but not as close as they would have liked. And he's won there. They have a good relationship. He checks a lot of boxes. He's just a down-home American guy, not going to overshadow her. And I feel like that's

That's an obvious easy one. What do you think? What do I think? My prediction is I think it's going to be, I mean, I was going to say Kelly, but I'll say Shapiro just to be different from you, Governor Shapiro of Pennsylvania. But I actually have like a wild idea that maybe the smartest thing for her to do is actually pick one of Gretchen Whitmer's

Or Pete Buttigieg? Because I do kind of feel like there's a sense of, oh, there couldn't possibly be like two women or a black woman and a gay man on the ticket. But this is the wave that is carrying you forward. Like maybe lean into it. There will definitely be like a long-term backlash. But that would be... I mean, in a way, this is like, this is the, is it, you know, are she thinking about swing voters? Is she thinking about the base? It's a choice she's going to make a million different ways. And this is one.

Well, stay tuned for Veep, The Pick, not the television show, which you can now watch and contribute to the millions of minutes being watched. In the meantime, thanks for listening to Mixed Signals from Semaphore Media. Our show is produced by Max Tani, Allison Rogers, Sheena Ozaki, Alan Haberchak, and Andrea Lopez-Crusado. With special thanks to Dan Nathan and the team at Risk Reversal Media who let us use this very nice dig. It's nice. Yeah, it's really nice. It's cozy. If you haven't checked out Dan's podcast, OK Computer, please do. It's fantastic.

And of course, special thanks to Britta Galanis, Chad Lewis, Rachel Oppenheim, Anna Pizzino, Garrett Wiley, and Jewel Zurn. Our engineer is Rick Kwan. Our theme music is by Billy Libby. And our public editor is the childless cat ladies of America.

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