HBO’s Succession has always been a look into how the wealthy and influential treat the world as their personal playground. In the latest episode, democracy is thrown away like a used condom so the 1% can go balls deep into handpicking the next President of the United States.
This week’s episode took the conspiracy theories of a shadowy cabal handpicking U.S. presidents and turned it into a power orgy of the rich and deplorable. Unironically referred to as “The Future Freedom Summit,” the Roy family and their wealthy constituents meet at a secret, decadent political conference to effectively decide which candidate they’re willing to put their wealth and influence behind to become the next President of the United States. Permeating the entire episode is this silent understanding that these people will politically get in bed with anyone who can serve each person’s individual plan to preserve and increase their power.
Shiv duplicitously presents her pick, conservative Republican Rick Salgado, as a sound choice given her expertise as a political consultant, but only after he promises to take down her father and make her the new CEO of the company. Roman backs Jeryd Mencken, a loud-mouth fascist who piques Roman’s interest with jokes of instituting forced labor camps. The pair even share a bathroom pow wow replete with a “deep state conspiracy hour but with a fucking wink” TV show pitch and unspoken, yet undeniable, sexual tension between the two. All of these masturbatory power plays ultimately end with the presumed decisive voice of this unconstitutional candidate selection: Logan Roy.
Even with a looming Department of Justice investigation into his company’s wrongdoings and circulating reports of his declining health, Logan is the kingmaker and finds pleasure in watching some of the most powerful people bend to his will. He calls the Vice President of the United States David Boyer to his hotel room to discuss possibly backing him for president. First, he asks the second most powerful man in American politics to act as room service and bring the Waystar magnate some Coca-Cola, an obvious mind game to illustrate Logan’s nearly immeasurable influence. After the vice president expresses his bemusement by the request, Logan goes full Trump and asks for something much bigger than the soda — if he would fire the deputy attorney general. While Trump fired the attorney general for opposing his immigration ban, Logan wanting to do the same in order to rid himself of the DOJ investigation makes the parallel clear as day.
Throughout the episode, the Republican nominee for president was picked as cavalierly as a drunk frat guy scanning a bar for his next sexual conquest. At one point, presidential aide Linda Emond likens the political conference to “clown town” before nonchalantly upending the entire political process by stating, “The delegates will choose at the RNC [Republican National Convention] of course, but I think we can all be real and say we need to choose here first.” She says this to the people she considers “the family who lost us the presidency,” referring to the Roy family’s news network ATN questioning if the president was senile, costing him any hope for a re-election bid. In the span of 20 seconds, one of the closest people to the President of the United States blamed the Roy family for the President losing his job and asked those same people to help find a new president. That’s how quick it takes to shift alliances like orgy partners on Succession.
By the end of the episode, Logan thinks he’s powerful enough to push a fascist through to the highest position in American politics regardless of the torrential downpour of hate Shiv warns him follows Mencken. The head of one of the biggest news networks in the world leveraging his influence to get a fascist elected president isn’t just a Republican wet dream turned into a TV episode; it’s how we got Trump as president, and why this episode feels disturbingly real.
