'Veep' predicted Donald Trump's meltdowns with this hated character
Lacey Terrell/ HBO
"Veep" executive producer David Mandel says that he sees the similarities between the show's fictional character Jonah Ryan (Timothy Simons) and Donald Trump, particularly at this moment.
Jonah, who's endlessly insulted by his peers in DC on the show, ran for Congress during the show's recent fifth season. Despite his inexperience and buffoonish behavior, he went on to win the election.
Jonah's win "was somewhat part of people’s dissatisfaction with our current form of government," Mandel recently told Business Insider while promoting the release of "Veep's" season-five digital HD release.
"I think there’s something right now going on — obviously we see it with Trump, where characteristics that perhaps once upon a time would’ve been seen as ungentlemanly and would’ve made someone unsuited for office somehow sort of speaks to the common man somehow," he continued.
Like Jonah, Trump is green when it comes to government leadership. At the same time, reports suggests that's a positive to his voters. As for demographics, polls show Trump's supporters are overwhelmingly male, white, and lower-income.
That isn't where the similarities end, according to Mandel.
"In some weird ways, Jonah’s sort of thin-skinned, lack of grasping of the issues, hair-trigger temper, and literally and figuratively shooting himself in the foot resonated with the voters," he said. "And I think it very much fits in with our sort of deep world of politics, and unfortunately our view of the voters."
Though the most recent "Veep" season was in the process of being written when Trump announced his campaign for president last year, the meltdowns surrounding Trump recently unmistakably recall what we saw Jonah doing on our TVs earlier this year:
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