“Seinfeld” and “Veep” star Julie Louis-Dreyfus said that Democratic presidential candidate Marianne Williamson making a “Seinfeld” reference on stage during the debate on July 30 was odd.
Williamson made the reference while answering a question about the National Rifle Association (NRA).
“The issue of gun safety, of course, is that the NRA has us in a chokehold, but so do the pharmaceutical companies, so do the health insurance companies, so do the fossil fuel companies, and so do the defense contractors,” she said.
“And none of this will change until we either pass a constitutional amendment or pass legislation that establishes public funding for federal campaigns.”
The “Yadda, yadda, yadda” moment pic.twitter.com/AX4GLotug0
— Dan Gainor (@dangainor) July 31, 2019
“But for politicians, including my fellow candidates, who themselves have taken tens of thousands—and in some cases hundreds of thousands of dollars—from these same corporate donors to think that we now have the moral authority to say we’re going to take them on, I don’t think the Democratic party should be surprised that so many Americans believe: ‘Yadda, yadda, yadda,’” she added.
Appearing on the “Jimmy Kimmel Show” on Wednesday night, Louis-Dreyfus said that the reference “was so bizarre.”
“I guess she’s gonna pick me as her running mate? Is that what that means?” she said.
Responding to Kimmel wondering about the cultural impact of the line, she added: “Well, it’s bizarre, it’s kind of like worlds colliding and then some, right?” “It’ll be weird when they say, ‘No soup for you!'”
Williamson drew widespread attention for her debate performance, ranking as the top searched-for-candidate on Google during the event, but right now it doesn’t appear that she’ll qualify for the next round of debates, which require at least four polls of at least 2 percent by Aug. 28. She currently has none.
Louis-Dreyfus said that she was able to understand how the presidential candidates felt because of her role as lawmaker Selina Meyer in HBO’s “Veep,” telling Kimmel that she felt the “true anxiety that a lot of these people probably feel, going in and trying to sell themselves.”
“Watching the debate tonight, it gave me a lot of anxiety, I kind of had to turn away,” she added, referring to the second night of the two-night event.
Williamson’s Performance
Williamson, 67, an advisor to Oprah Winfrey, garnered some of the loudest applause from CNN’s crowd on Tuesday with her declarations, including when she called for reparations.
Williamson briefly seizing the spotlight came after weeks of dismissing charges that she’s a “new age nutcase.” But Williamson’s opening statement didn’t seem to help that case much. In it, she decried a “false god” of multinational corporation profits that she said, “takes precedence over the safety and the health and the well-being of we the American people.”
“If you think any of this wonkiness is going to deal with dark psychic force of the collectivized hatred that this president is bringing up in this country, then I’m afraid that the Democrats are going to see some very dark days,” Williamson said at one point, adding that, if the party doesn’t “start saying it, then why would those people feel that ‘they’re there for us,’ and I feel like they won’t vote for us, and Donald Trump will win.”
That debate moment began a pattern of sorts, as Williamson continued to chide the other candidates for putting detailed policy over more ambitious pledges to cure the country’s larger ills.
“I almost wonder why some of you are Democrats,” she said later. “You seem to think there’s something wrong about using the instruments of government to help people.”
In her closing statement, Williamson again dismissed the night’s political insider rhetoric and intellectual discussions, proclaiming that it was instead time for “radical truth-telling.” But then she returned to the kind of long declaration that has become her trademark.
“I want a politics that goes much deeper,” Williamson said, continuing that the only way to combat Trump is with “new voices of energy” that only come when the nation makes “amends for our own mistakes, love each other, love our democracy, love future generations. Something emotional and psychological that will not be, be, be emerging from anything on this stage. It will emerge from something I’m the one who’s qualified to bring forth.”
The Associated Press contributed to this report.