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Earlier this week, Xbox One owners participating in the Xbox Preview program were greeted with a rather nice surprise: Microsoft has implemented a beta test for a refund system. Not only is this refund system apparently planned for both Xbox One and Windows 10, but it’s also self-service, meaning you don’t need to go through customer support to get your … Continue reading

This morning the first Star Wars The Last Jedi teaser trailer was released to the public, and it’s a chiller. Just like the first teaser trailer for The Force Awakens, this trailer starts off with a shock. Not necessarily anything that’ll blow your socks off, but it’s meant to start you off with a sharp slap in the face. Don’t … Continue reading

David Mandel really enjoys those mashup videos floating around the internet recently of the Trump administration bumbling along as the “Veep” music and ending credits come in. 

But as the executive producer of “Veep,” they also make him thankful that he made the serendipitous decision to pull President Selina Meyer (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) out of the show’s fictional White House before Donald Trump stepped inside the real one.

“I laugh at it. I enjoy it, and then I thank my lucky stars,” Mandel told The Huffington Post over the phone.

“I’m not sure you want to see Trump in the White House doing stupid things and then also Selina in the White House doing stupid things,” he said. “There’s no scene of Mike McLintock that I could write doing a press conference that’s funnier than Sean Spicer apologizing about his Hitler references, you know what I mean?”

Instead, in the sixth season of HBO’s “Veep,” which returns this Sunday, Meyer and her team of bumbling fools will try and figure out how to traverse the political world as a former president of the United States ― one who, because she rose to the office through the vice presidency, never felt the pride that comes with being elected, much to her near-constant frustration. 

It’s the scenario that Mandel pitched when he first sat down with Louis-Dreyfus in 2015 to discuss potentially replacing Armando Iannucci as the show’s executive producer after four seasons. 

“Her goal in life is to be president of the United States,” he said. “If she wins an election and is the president of the United States, yeah, you can still have screw-ups every week and it can still be funny. Don’t get me wrong. But she’s achieved her goal. If Selina Meyer has achieved her goal, I think she’s just not as funny.”

The idea of Meyer on a “quest for redemption” interested Mandel much more. He dug into books about Harry and Bess Truman paying for their own stamps and driving on their own from the Midwest to D.C. He studied Bill Clinton’s desire to reclaim the spotlight at Obama’s second convention. The writers spoke to Anita McBride, who worked for George H.W. Bush, about what it was like to unexpectedly find yourself out of a job after a surprise election loss, and to Doug Band, who worked closely on the Clinton Foundation.

“The world of the former presidency is really rich,” he said. “Even in his later days, Richard Nixon found a certain amount of redemption, at least in foreign policy or in being invited back to the White House.”

“So there’s just a lot of room to see what can happen.”

We talked to Mandel ― who believes Meyer might be “the most misogynistic character on television” ― about where the show can go from here, and how it can survive at a time when the real world often seems more absurd than anything a comedy writer could think up. 

The interview below has been edited and condensed for clarity.

So last June, you guys are starting to try to figure out what you want to do with this new season. Selina is no longer in the White House. What kind of prep or what kind of ideas did you guys start batting around? 

I’ll step you back one baby step. This kind of goes back to when I first sat down in the late winter of 2015 and took the job. What I ended up pitching out to Julia [Louis-Dreyfus] and HBO was this notion that we would resolve the tie, she would lose the presidency (because I felt that’s what had to happen) and then the show would then become about her as a former president of the United States.

So we always knew we were working toward that. As we closed in on this notion of Dan Egan becoming a media person and moving into the news ― the idea of him doing sort of a Stephanopoulos and ending up on a morning show ― we started [zeroing in on] this idea of we’re going to jump ahead a year [to start this season] and the first scene will be Dan interviewing Selina on his new talk show as she tells us about what’s going on in her life.

Those were the first ― what’s the word? ― the first shreds of what this season could be. But we started reading a lot of books about former presidents, meeting with candidates, talking to staffers and just really, as we always do on “Veep,” trying to find out a lot of the real research and stuff ― then off of that stuff, starting to spin our story of what her post-presidency would be like.

So why did the idea of having her not win and enter that world excite you? 

For me, the thing that she wants most in life is to win the presidency. Even though she was president of the United States, she kind of got there in a half-assed way. So her goal in life is to be president of the United States.

If she wins an election and is the president of the United States, yeah, you can still have screw-ups every week and it can still be funny. Don’t get me wrong. But she’s achieved her goal. If Selina Meyer has achieved her goal, I think she’s just not as funny. So some of that is why, in my mind, she had to lose.

When you guys prepping for it, what kind of books were you reading?

There are these just wonderful books about the post-presidency. I just read a book a couple of months ago about ― it’s this fascinating little story about how in the early 1950s, Harry Truman and Bess Truman got in their car and drove from in his home in Kansas to D.C. and then New York City to see his daughter.

In those days, there was no money for a former president. There was no money for their offices ― he paid for his own office out of his own pocket. He paid for his own stamps. There was no permanent security, no secret service. They got in a car and they drove off. They would reach these different little towns and the local police forces would lose their minds that the president had just shown up.

We’ve gone from that to President Obama. He’s putting together a billion-dollar library. He budgets for a staff, for around-the-clock secret service ― you know, everything has changed, and it’s just a fascinating world that we were really excited to jump into ― because no one had really explored it as an area.

And, Selina Meyer, former president of the United States, just sounded funny.

I know in the past, consultants have been a useful source of information [for “Veep” writers and actors]. Has that become less of a resource as you guys have got the idea of what’s going on in Washington, or have you ―

No, we’re constantly reaching out to them on specific issues and things. One of our consultants is a wonderful woman who has been on the show longer than I have named Anita McBride, who worked for both Bushes. She had her own stories but also put us in contact with other people from the [George H. W.] Bush presidency.

What people forget about that and I’m happy to remind them is Bush ― they didn’t think they were going to lose to Clinton [in 1992]. When they lost, they were shocked. Obviously, it’s not the same as only serving a year [as Selina Meyer does in “Veep”], but there were some comparisons to be made with Selina in terms of the shock of being kicked out and not being prepared for it ― in terms of some of the staff having a hard time finding new jobs because they were partially being blamed for his loss. That [tidbit] was an amazing thing that came out through the consultants.

We’re constantly inviting interesting people either to our offices for lunch to meet up with who are just giving us pieces. Last summer we had Doug Band, who was one of the key Clinton staffers who helped with the creation of the Clinton Foundation. That was something that we definitely wanted to play around with in our little Selina world.

You only have done one previous season, but does the idea of getting outside of the White House and opening up to CBS ―

Well, I definitely thought giving people some new places to go would be great for the show. To present new stories and new worlds, especially with the CBS morning show and the Dan story ― the idea of being able to add media, if you will to our quiver, was just a really fantastic thing because obviously so much of the politics and the media are tied together. So it gave us a real chance to play around in the world of those morning shows.

The other big thing is the distance really helps with the current Trump presidency. I’m not sure you want to see Trump in the White House doing stupid things and then also Selina in the White House doing stupid things, so the new locations give us perspective and distance in the sort of grand “tragedy plus time equals comedy.” Well, tragedy plus distance equals comedy, [too].

There are a lot of easy jokes to make about Washington. But in my opinion, the show is at its best when it doesn’t go for the easy joke and it goes at something [more complex], like how feminism is perceived these days.

When it comes to our our take on D.C., we sort of pride ourselves on having a very twisted take. We definitely do a lot about feminism and women’s issues, but we come at it from this really interesting perspective. Selina Meyer, in some ways, is the most misogynistic character on television. She hates women more than most men do, so it gives us a very unique angle on women’s issues. 

What gets you excited about where this show can go from here?

The world of the former presidency is really rich, and I think the quest for redemption is rich. Even in his later days, Richard Nixon found a certain amount of redemption, at least in foreign policy or in being invited back to the White House, and so there’s just a lot of room to see what can happen to not just these characters, but to Selina specifically. 

Even watching Bill Clinton speaking at the convention during Obama’s second convention, where Clinton kind of returned triumphantly to become the chief explainer ― it’s fascinating to see the hunger that these political animals have to be back on the stage. And that’s so true of Selina. 

Before you go, I feel I am unfortunately legally required to ask you a couple Trump-related questions. For a while there was a meme about throwing the “Curb Your Enthusiasm” music on ― 

And now it’s the “Veep” music. I love it. It’s weird to see. It’s funny to see.

It makes me just so glad though that we’re kind of coming at it from a different way. There’s no scene of Mike McLintock that I could write doing a press conference that’s funnier than Sean Spicer apologizing about his Hitler references, you know what I mean? So I’m so glad that this season doesn’t have Mike at the podium. I laugh at it. I enjoy it, and then I thank my lucky stars because if she had won the presidency, if she was still in the Oval, I’m just wondering if we would have had to just throw a lot of things in the garbage ― just because they would have been too close and yet seemed old and stale.

Final question: Are we ever going to get to find out if Selina Meyer is a Democrat or a Republican?

Never. That’s the one spoiler I will give away. It just doesn’t matter. For Selina Meyer, it’s not about the party ― it’s about the power. Obviously this doesn’t happen as much in modern times, I guess, other than Jared Kushner, but if Selina Meyer had to switch parties six different times to win, she’d do that.

Season 6 of “Veep” premieres on Sunday, April 16 at 10:30 p.m.

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Michael Evangelista-Ysasaga is a Mexican American living in Fort Worth, Texas. His grandparents immigrated to the United States, undocumented, in the 1930s. For the past 10 years, he has lectured on immigration reform across the U.S., including at the Fort Worth Rotary Club. And now, he’s leading the Latino-owned U.S. military and government contracting firm PennaGroup in creating and submitting a design proposal for President Donald Trump’s controversial proposed border wall.

“I will build a great wall,” Trump declared in June 2015, while announcing his candidacy for president. “And nobody builds walls better than me, believe me.” At the time, the statement seemed to many like an absurd proclamation that, especially coming from a former reality TV star, would likely never actually come to fruition.

For PennaGroup CEO Evangelista-Ysasaga, Trump’s vision for a border wall felt less like a vague possibility than an inevitable reality after his election. “We’re a Latino-owned firm,” he told The Huffington Post in an interview, specifying that about 80 percent of his workers are Mexican-American, the descendants of immigrants. “We had to do a lot of soul-searching when all of this was first happening.”

In response to a solicitation issued by U.S. Customs and Border Protection in March, various contracting firms began proposing bids for the 1,000-mile, $21 billion wall project. CBP outlined the requirements for effective wall proposals in a contract issued on its website, with a March 29 deadline. Ideally, it explained, the wall should measure 30 feet in height, though designs as low as 18 feet “may be acceptable.” The wall should be impossible to climb over or tunnel under, able to withstand continuous attack by “sledgehammer, car jack, pick axe, chisel, battery operated impact tools, battery operated cutting tools, Oxy/acetylene torch or other similar hand-held tools.”

And of course, it should be visually appealing ― at least on the northern side, facing the U.S. 

According to Evangelista-Ysasaga, word of the various design ideas sparked by the contract travelled fast. “The defense contracting community is very small,” he explained. “And we were hearing some very disturbing design options, some of which would be lethal for those who tried to cross. There was talk of electrified fences, razor wire — that stuff is just horrific. People’s hair and clothing get caught in it. If you’re trying to cross in the middle of the night and get caught in that stuff, it’s a disaster.”

Evangelista-Ysasaga declined to name any of the firms behind such design options. “I really don’t want to name them but among those proposing such designs was a Fortune 500 company that makes airplanes,” he claimed.

As a result, Evangelista-Ysasaga says he decided to throw his hat in the bidding ring. “We wanted to propose a more humane obstruction,” he expressed. “I didn’t want to have to wake up on a Sunday morning and read a story about a family getting killed trying to cross the border.”

PennaGroup’s vision is catered to fit CBP’s basic demands, delivering two relatively straightforward walls with a hint of patriotic flair. The first option is titled a “Solid, Concrete Border Wall,” featuring black wall panels emblazoned with the seal of the United States in recessed concrete and connected with highly polished steel beams.

Then there’s the “Other Border Wall” ― constructed from polished, double wire mesh panels, with a six-foot tall anti-climb cap, also emblazoned with a seal. The cap, PennaGroup’s technical team explained in an email to HuffPost, was designed with neoclassical architecture influences in mind, including the federal and Greek revival styles that inspired 18th- and 19th-century design in Washington, D.C. These architectural details, however, would only adorn the side of the wall that faces America.

“Design costs money,” Evangelista-Ysasaga noted. 

Aesthetics are key, especially while designing for a president known to privilege a particular brand of embellished style. Yet it was also crucial, according to PennaGroup’s technical team, that the wall would effectively bar individuals from entry and withstand efforts to destroy it. Although the team emphasized they could not share too many details at this phase in the selection process, PennaGroup’s two potential designs both meet the “threshold requirements” demanded by the government: anti-climb features, anti-tunneling features and anti-tamper features. Both walls measure 30 feet in height.

It was also important to Evangelista-Ysasaga that his design take wildlife, hydrology and ecology into account. While prepping their objectives, PennaGroup consulted with nonprofits and wildlife experts including the U.S. Forest Service and the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department to make the wall’s impact on its surrounding environment as minimal as possible. They declined to expand on specifics until after Phase II of the selection process. 

One detail they did expand upon, however, was a tactic to mollify the wall’s encroachment on a bird sanctuary by the Rio Grande River. The tech team stated that forest birds are reluctant to cross gaps of unfamiliar habitat. To ease the transition, PennaGroup’s design “preserves the ‘connection’ between the small patches of existing bird habitats by incorporating eco-friendly ‘wall paths.’”

As far as potential wall designs go, PennaGroup’s submissions are relatively straightforward. Others have veered more toward the dystopian, such as DarkPulse Technologies’ idea, which features a wall embedded with sensors that will notify border agents of any unusual motion or meddling with the wall in real time. Crisis Resolution Security Services’ Michael Hari turned somewhat hostile when explaining to The Guardian that the company’s design “is meant to defend what is truly American, and it can start by being beautiful in a way that ordinary American citizens appreciate, rather than by being starkly institutional or by catering to the controversial and perverse tastes of the elites.”

Other organizations, however, have used the callout as an opportunity for creativity and resistance, such as JM Design Studio, a team made entirely of women. JM’s vision imagines walls made of 10-meter organ pipes, with space in between for people to pass through. Another JM design option features three million hammocks hanging across the border from available trees, open to all.

Perhaps the most innovative response to Trump’s dictum comes from a critical collective proposing to demarcate a new bi-national territory on the border of Mexico and the U.S., co-governed by both, called Otra Nation. The region, dubbed “the worlds’ first continental bi-national socio-ecotone,” would be built by a workforce of half-Mexican and half-American laborers, founded on ideals of energy independence and local economic empowerment.

It is highly unlikely these artistic interpretations will be selected by CBP, or even make it to the sought-after Phase II, as they veer from typical wall imagery, whose symbolism has become so enmeshed with Trump’s politics. Also, some of the more radical proposals fail to live up the the structural requirements outlined, instead using the design opportunity to illuminate flaws in the reasoning behind constructing a border wall at all.

In the next round of proposals, down-selected firms will be issued a prototype task order, which requires them to build actual prototypes and mockups. Evangelista-Ysasaga is convinced his vision will make it to Phase II. 

According to the Pew Research Center, 83 percent of Hispanic Americans oppose Trump’s proposition of a border wall, yet 1 in 10 firms bidding for the CBP job are Latino-owned. For some firms, the choice is apolitical ― a job is a job, after all. Evangelista-Ysasaga, however, sees border security as a necessary step in comprehensive immigration reform. 

“In my lectures and over the last decade, I have figured out the American people are not going to pass a new set of desperately needed immigration laws without enforcing the laws in the books,” he said. “And that means securing our border.”

As Evangelista-Ysasaga sees it, the conversation regarding immigration in the U.S. is, like so many other polarizing issues, at a standstill. Those on the left are pushing to open pathways to citizenships for the hardworking, undocumented immigrants already living in this country. Those on the right are fixed on keeping people from crossing the border illegally. Evangelista-Ysasaga believes “there is no conversation in between.”

When Evangelista-Ysasaga describes immigrants, he does so in a vocabulary altogether removed from Trump’s rhetoric of Mexicans as “bad hombres,” rapists and criminals. Instead, he discusses their belief in faith, family and hard work. He cites the “across the board” studies that consistently prove immigrants commit crimes with less frequency than American citizens and contribute greatly to the American economy. 

According to Evangelista-Ysasaga, these immigrants are the people he is most interested in serving. “Bringing the undocumented immigrants in this country out of the shadows is the least we can do,” he said. A border wall, he asserts, does not run contrary to this goal, but will open up the necessary channels to realize it. 

The problem, he explained, is that when the conversation surrounding border security is co-opted by the extreme right, it becomes wrapped up in language that’s filled with xenophobia and hate. “The left has allowed extremists to hijack the security narrative and turn it into something that it is not,” he said. “I want the U.S. to be free of threats. I want to ensure that threats to the U.S. don’t make it across the border. There is nothing inherently xenophobic about this.”

“Now people say, you’re building a wall, you must be a racist, but that’s not true,” he added, comparing the obstruction to locking your door at night even though you don’t hate your neighbors. “Every sovereign nation has a right to say who stays and who goes.”

Michelle Mittelstadt of The Migration Policy Institute, an independent, nonpartisan, nonprofit think tank in Washington, D.C., offered her response to Evangelista-Ysasaga’s position in an email to The Huffington Post. “Countries have a sovereign right to protect their borders and to determine who can and cannot enter,” she wrote. “And fencing makes sense in certain high-crossing areas, and has proven itself to be effective when used in key corridors and in combination with other strategies, as has been the case since the mid-1990s.

“But spending $21 billion or more fencing the entirety of the border ― by comparison, the U.S. spent $19 billion last year on all federal immigration enforcement ― would not represent an effective investment of resources and would be a case of fighting the last war.”

Lawyer Amelia Miazad, a founding member of the nonprofit organization Wall of Us, agreed. “All nations have different border policies,” she told HuffPost, “almost no nations have walls. The wall is a symbolic rhetorical tool to instill hate and division. There is no rational or responsible correlation between a giant wall and border security. It starts from an assumption that we have people pouring over the borders, which is not accurate.”

To this point, Mittelstadt noted that there were 409,000 apprehensions at the border in 2016, around one fourth of what they were in 2000, at 1.64 million. Furthermore she added that 40 to 50 percent of all unauthorized immigrants are visa overstayers, who would not be affected in any way by a wall. In fact, The Migration Policy Institute estimates that only 18 percent of undocumented immigrants have lived in the U.S. for under five years, with 58 percent calling America home for a decade or more.

“The whole migration picture from Mexico has been realigned, and huge inflows of illegal Mexican crossers are a thing of the past,” Mittelstadt summarized. 

Miazad also contested Evangelista-Ysasaga’s assertion that a border wall, at this point, is inevitable. “What the post-election enthusiasm and patriotism by Americans has shown is the only wall the that is going to get built is a wall of resistance,” she said. “The image of a wall is very divisive and it has really unified Americans to voice their desires to have unity, not division.”

Both Democrats and Republicans, Miazad explained, have voiced reasonable opposition to the wall. Liberals are skeptical that a border wall will increase border security, opting to build social programs supporting local communities at a fraction of the cost. Likewise many conservatives realize the fiscal irresponsibility of the wall’s massive budget, anticipating that despite Trump’s promise that Mexico will pay for the wall, Americans will end up doing so themselves.

“Between the legal opposition, the grassroots opposition and the congressional opposition, there will not be any wall,” Miazad said.

Underlying Evangelista-Ysasaga’s claims is the reality that Trump’s border wall is a lucrative business opportunity. When asked about the $21 billion project’s hefty paycheck, he replied, “We’re a for-profit enterprise, but if you take a look at my firm’s website, we have our pick of federal projects. We could have made enough money on other projects without taking on all of this heat.”

Moreover, Evangelista-Ysasaga condemned the Latino-owned contractors who refused to submit project ideas. “I don’t understand why you would allow someone who doesn’t care about immigrants to dictate the narrative of immigration,” he said.

In response to skepticism about his intentions, Evangelista-Ysasaga recommended a 2006 clip showing him reiterating the importance of immigration reform, which he recently shared on Twitter in light of the controversy his interest in the wall ignited:

Whether right or wrong, Evangelista-Ysasaga seems genuinely convinced the erection of a border wall will indeed yield progress toward immigration reform. Placing his faith in the Trump administration, he believes that walls will lead to effective border security, which will open up the conversation for the improvements he truly cares about. If the Trump administration does not use the wall as a springboard for the kind of change Evangelista-Ysasaga hopes for and predicts, he intends to make sure they will be held accountable.

“I have faith in the American people and their will,” he said. “Nationally, this has got everyone’s attention. I believe the American people will hold the administration’s feet to the fire. Solving one side of the problem is not good enough. And I’ll continue to pound on doors until it happens. Building this wall is going to give me even more of a platform to demand comprehensive immigration reform.”

Whether or not this pragmatic optimism will yield the desired result remains to be seen. In the meantime, PennaGroup’s vision embodies an unusual strategy in today’s polarizing political climate: one built on compromise, conversation and, not quite as unconventionally, capital.

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If there’s one thing guaranteed to make these anchors nearly squeal in delight, it’s the suffering of others.

On Friday morning’s ​Fox & Friends ― the vacuous space where reason and compassion go to die ― hosts Brian Kilmeade and Ainsley Earhardt simply couldn’t control their glee when talking about jailed immigrants.

“The party is over for illegal criminals in jail,” Kilmeade said, referencing a new plan by President Donald Trump that would massively curtail protections for detained immigrants.

“Get this: They’re enjoying seven hours of outdoor activity,” Kilmeade continued. “Who gets that anymore? Fresh sheets ― I don’t get that. No need to learn English. I was born with that. But the Trump administration vowing a new plan to cut back on perks in their immigration crackdown, saying, expect a far less detailed set of regulations ― maybe even dirty sheets ― including no translation services, so learn English.”

Currently, jails must notify immigration officials if a detainee has spent two weeks or longer in solitary confinement, the New York Times reported. They must also check on suicidal inmates every 15 minutes and give daily mental health evaluations. These seemingly basic regulations could be rolled back under Trump’s new plan as a way to get local officials to open up their facilities to more prisoners.

Among the current rules, detainees also get clean clothes and sheets every day, rather than once a week. Fox & Friends seems to have a big problem with that.

“Seven hours of outdoor activity, freshly washed sheets, and absolutely no need to learn English,” Earhardt said on the show, as Media Matters pointed out. “That’s the easy life of an illegal immigrant inside American jails. But now, the Trump administration says the party is over.” 

These two must be attending some pretty terrible parties. Immigrants already being detained face “widespread human rights violations,” according to the American Civil Liberties Union.

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