10 Times Veep’s Ridiculous Antics Mirrored Real Life Events

HBO's Veep is one of the funniest shows on television, an absurd parody depicting the day-to-day operations of a vice president and her staff. The West Wing this is not; our main characters don't deliver inspiring speeches about the nature of democracy or hold impassioned debates over the future of the country. Instead, they spend their entire day discussing what flavor of frozen yogurt Selina Meyer should eat during a photo op or dealing with a small blemish on the VP's face. Is it a parody, though? Julia Louis-Dreyfus says she doesn't consider the show to be one, as its ridiculous plots are not any crazier than what actually goes on in D.C. "Our show isn't a parody," she recently told reporters. "We create situations that are plausible." She has a point, as many storylines that have viewers busting a gut have genuinely happened in real life. Sometimes, the writers intentionally reference reality, but other times, they just write a crazy idea and then, eerily, politicians follow suit. Whether intentional or not, here are 10 seemingly-preposterous Veep antics that sadly mirror real-life events. 10) Continuity With Change Selina Meyer’s campaign slogan throughout season 4 is “Continuity With Change,” which is exactly the kind of hollow piece of political rhetoric this series loves to mock. That three-word phrase sounds vaguely important, but it basically just means, “Some things will stay the same, and some things will change.” How inspiring! Well, recently a real-world politician was apparently emboldened by HBO’s fictional vice president. Though it wasn’t his campaign slogan, Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull began using Selina’s phrase in interviews earlier this year, making the following comments to various publications over the course of one week: There is continuity and there is change. As you go from one Liberal prime minister to another, you have continuity and you have change and there has been a lot of change. The bottom line is there is continuity and there is change. Veep writer Simon Blackwell took to Twitter to share the hilarity with his followers, noting that "continuity with change" was the most meaningless election slogan the writers could think of. Meanwhile, Julia Louis-Dreyfus barely even knew what to say, simply tweeting, "I am dumbstruck." A note for politicians: before incorporating a talking point into your daily routine, have an intern verify that the phrase wasn't ruthlessly mocked on a comedy series. 9) The Meet The Press Screwup In the season 1 episode “Chung,” the vice president makes a regrettable statement on Meet the Press, and her staff spends the rest of the day scrambling to undo the damage. This aired on HBO just a few days after, in real life, the vice president made a regrettable statement on Meet the Press and his staff scrambled to undo the damage. The parallel was totally unintentional. In Veep’s case, Selina Meyer makes a comment about her rival, Danny Chung, saying that “technically he’s not an American.” This is construed as being a racist remark, as Chung is half-Chinese, and although the statement is made off camera, it's recorded on a hot microphone. In a strange coincidence, mere days earlier, there was a real-life vice presidential screwup on Meet the Press. On May 6, Vice President Joe Biden spoke with David Gregory and appeared to accidentally change the Obama’s administration’s stance on gay marriage. According to a book released in 2014, the scene inside the West Wing in the aftermath of Biden’s interview was complete and utter chaos. Basically, it sounds exactly like the madness that unfolded in the Veep episode. Obviously, the comments themselves are nothing alike, but it was still incredibly weird that by pure accident, the show featured a storyline about the vice president slipping up on Meet the Press the same week that this ocurred in reality. Showrunner Armando Iannucci was just as taken aback, noting to the USA Today, "I thought it was such a bizarre coincidence." 8) The Three Rs Here's one that was a clear reference to actual events, but the Veep occurrence is so ridiculous that it's difficult to believe it genuinely unfolded. During the season 4 episode “Debate,” Selina Meyer bungles her performance when she brings up “three Rs,” only to forget the third one. She manages to get out “reform,” “reaffirm,” but she can’t think of “renew;" staff members angrily shout into their TVs as Meyer attempts to escape the PR nightmare. She nervously says, “The third R is...actually, in fact, let me go back to reaffirm, which was number two.” A debate moderator hammers Selina about the last R, so she’s forced to come up with a third word on the spot: repel. That doesn’t quite work in the context of what she’s been saying, but it's all she can think of. This mirrors a famous debate moment from back in 2011. During a Republican debate, Texas Governor Rick Perry promised he would eliminate three government agencies when he becomes president. Unfortunately, after Department of Education and Department of Commerce, he couldn't think of the third one. Believe it or not, the real-life equivalent is far more cringeworthy than the scene in Veep; though Selina was able to recover, Perry never did name a third agency, even after a moderator asked him to clarify. The exchange ended with the four letters that destroyed a campaign: “Oops.” 7) Disclosing Emails Hillary Clinton's recent email controversy may have sounded weirdly familiar to Veep fans. All the way back in the season 1 episode “Full Disclosure,” Selina is battling scandal after reassigning a secret service agent for smiling on the job. The White House requests her office release their secret service personnel records, and Meyers’ staff decides that to combat the ensuing madness, they will release all of their records, including emails. “They won’t have time to read everything," Mike says. "You can’t read everything. I don’t read half the stuff I’m supposed to.” Of course, moments after declaring their goal of full disclosure, Selina commands her team to hold certain documents back. “Obviously, it is not going to be full disclosure," she tells them. "It’s going to be partial disclosure light.” Armando Iannucci explained to The Daily Beast that he usually doesn’t write Veep scenes based on actual events. Rather, he writes ridiculous situations and then, by coincidence, they happen in real life, and he pointed to this as an example. Watching the episode during a binge, you might assume this was written as a parody of Hillary Clinton, but in fact it aired years prior to the secretary of state's email disclosure. “...in the very first season was under fire for her emails so she had all her emails released and the federal government had to read them all," Iannucci said. "And Hillary Clinton’s going through that right now. It happened to Selina four years ago. It’s surreal. Nothing you can come up with is as crazy as something that has actually happened in real life. That’s what you discover." In fact, many of Clinton’s now-public email exchanges have drawn comparisons to Selina Meyer. In several, Clinton complains about meetings having been cancelled without anyone bothering to tell her. There's one particularly memorable email where she writes that she heard about a cabinet meeting on the radio, with nobody having informed her of it. "Can I go," she asks Huma Abedin. Presumably, her next question was, "Did the president call?" 6) The Campaign Book Speaking of Hillary Clinton, Selina Meyers’ campaign book, "Some New Beginnings," is generally a spoof of all the insincere, ghostwritten memoirs politicians release prior to launching a presidential campaign. But when Hillary Clinton’s Hard Choices hit store shelves in June 2014, two months after the Veep episode, fans of the show couldn't help but chuckle. Executive producer Frank Rich said in an interview that he definitely saw a similarity between the two books. " was exactly like Selina's book...it was completely anodyne, you know; Progress will come in the future, we'll meet at the crossroads of hope and change, and whatever." Granted, that pretty much describes every political memoir ever published, but seeing Clinton's released while the Veep episode was so fresh in viewers' minds made the whole ordeal especially funny. 5) Redoing The Oath Of Office In the season 3 finale, Selina suddenly ascends to the highest office in the world, but she runs into some difficulty during the swearing in. After taking the oath of office in the first act, she’s informed that she is technically not the president because she did not say “preserve.” As she was speaking, Mike almost knocked over a lamp, and so a distracted Selina only got the first syllable of "preserve" out. Without that one word having been fully uttered, the whole ceremony is invalid. While in New Hampshire campaigning, the new president has to fly all the way back to DC to be sworn in a second time just because Mike was being clumsy. A president having to redo the oath of office because of a ridiculously minor slip up? That's an insane scenario, right? Actually, this is exactly what happened to President Obama back in 2009. During his swearing in, Justice Roberts stumbled a few times, at one point saying “I will execute the office of President to the United States faithfully” rather than “I will faithfully execute…” This led to a less than smooth event, and so just like in Veep, the ceremony ended up being performed a second time the following day. 4) The Unfortunately-Framed TV Interview In a season 2 episode, Selina Meyer attends a pig roast, only for disaster to strike thanks to an unfortunate camera framing. Meyer discusses the administration’s support for Israel while a pig is being prepared literally right behind her. Kent shouts into his phone, “The VP is voicing solidarity with the Jewish people in front of rotating pork! Change the visual! De-pork the visual!” Jonah is then tasked with getting the VP away from the pig, so he slowly steps behind Meyer in an attempt to block it from the camera's view. That doesn’t quite work, so he bends to tie his shoe while making the precise pose required to ensure the pork does not show up on screen. This situation calls to mind a real-life example of an unfortunately-framed interview involving animals. Back in 2008, Alaska Governor Sarah Palin celebrated Thanksgiving by giving a press conference from a turkey farm and pardoning one of the birds, a common tradition among governors. It was the type of event that would typically garner very little media attention, but what made it into a story was the way the interview was shot. As Palin was speaking, right behind her a man can be seen shoving a turkey into a kill cone. This was at the same event during which the governor describes herself as "friend to all creatures great and small.” Oops. We can imagine some Kents and Jonah were screaming at each other while this was taking place, but unfortunately, nobody thought to awkwardly tie their shoe in front of the farmer. 3) The Teleprompter Malfunction There’s a great sequence in season 4 in which President Meyers’ teleprompter breaks during the State of the Union, so she must improvise while attempting to alert her staff that something is wrong. If you were to watch the speech itself without knowing about the technical glitch, you would have thought she had completely lost her mind. Four months after that episode was written, an analogous situation ocurred in real life. During a speech at the Iowa Freedom Summit, Sarah Palin’s teleprompter evidently broke down halfway through, and so she attempted to improvise the remainder of her remarks. The result was incredibly bizarre and all over the place, but it makes more sense when we consider that she, like Selina, was frantically trying to figure out what to say after her prepared words suddenly disappeared. This is another parallel that showrunner Armando Iannucci pointed to in an interview. In this case, the episode aired after Palin’s incident, so it might have seemed like a deliberate parody, but in fact, the Veep sequence was shot long before Palin's misfortunate. “We write certain situations, and then after we’ve finished editing the episode or getting it ready, that situation happens in real-life," Iannucci said. "It’s rather spooky.” 2) Robust In the season 2 episode “Hostages,” Selina is set to deliver a speech at a Marine Corps Base, and at the last minute, Dan changes a line to include the word “robust.” They can’t stop talking about what a great word this is, which apparently sticks in Sue’s head; later, when she freezes up at a congressional hearing, Sue says "robust" three separate times. The media goes crazy with the story that both Selina and Sue used the same word, with headlines like “Robusted! It’s Washington Wordshare” and “Who you gonna call? Robusters!” Half the episode is spent debating the difference between calling for a “robust response” and a “considered response,” and the storyline points to the ludicrousness of politicians so carefully calculating every sentence to manipulate voters and then repeating the talking points over and over. Years later, during the 2016 election, CNN assembled a wonderful mashup of politicians saying "robust" in speeches, and it’s one of those things that you can never stop noticing once it's pointed out. Seriously, they say robust all the time. As executive producer Frank Rich explained, "Now, you literally cannot hear a politician speak...without using the word 'robust.'" 1) The Government Shutdown We see the ridiculous effects of a government shutdown in season 2, including trash piling up around D.C. because the government agencies have been closed and a hiker being eaten by a bear because park rangers were not on duty. This was broadcast in June 2013, and the episode was written because a shutdown had been looming for a while. It was more of a vague threat rather than something the general public imagined would happen, though, so Iannucci and his writers decided to put together a crazy scenario where furloughs actually did take place. Then, four months later, it was no longer as amusing: the U.S. government actually did shut down, leading to massive furloughs and the closing of national parks. Granted, similar situations have occurred in prior decades, but Iannucci still didn't believe there was any legitimate chance of it happening in 2013. If the Veep writers knew a real shutdown was about to negatively impact millions of people, the show may not have made such light of the situation. Iannucci explained: "Sometimes we write stories that we think are funny, and then those things actually do come up in Washington and everyone is like, 'How did you find out that was happening?' We were like, 'We didn’t think it actually happened, or would happen. We thought it was just absurd, so we made it a story.' That’s the frightening thing here." Frightening indeed.