Julia Louis-Dreyfus says ‘pathetic’ Trump is worse president than Veep’s Selina Meyer

Actor played US president on HBO comedy

Julia Louis-Dreyfus says that Donald Trump is “actually worse” at being the president than her Veep character Selina Meyer.

The actor and comedian appeared at a fundraiser for presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden on Thursday (23 July), having played his fictional counterpart on screen for seven seasons as a vice-president vying for the top job.

According to the pool report, Louis-Dreyfus said that the pilot episode of Veep imagined all plastic cutlery in the US Capitol replaced with recyclable utensils as the writers tried to come up with “the stupidest, weakest environmental gesture that my idiot character could possibly make, so that she wouldn’t offend the fossil fuel industry”.

“But that’s actually more than Trump has done for the environment in four years,” she said.

“Talk about pathetic, he’s actually worse than a fictional president with a team of professional writers working 24/7 to make her as bad as possible.”

Referencing a past joke made by Biden that he would pick her for president, Louis-Dreyfus continued: “I was of course flattered.

“But then I realised, this is America. We can’t make a totally unqualified, ill-equipped TV personality vice president. No, no, in this country we make him president.”

Louis-Dreyfus starred in Armando Iannucci’s political comedy Veep as a US vice president who would do anything to win the presidency. The show ran from 2012 to 2019 on HBO.

Biden has previously shown support for the actor, tweeting following her 2017 breast cancer diagnosis: “We Veeps stick together. Jill and I, and all of the Bidens, are with you, Julia.”